


Up the Revolution

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Gen, alternate alternate title: MAGNUS BURNSIDES AND THE MOST AMAZING WOMAN IN THE WORLD, alternate title: JULIA WAXMAN AND THE AMNESIA BOY, an unholy amalgamation of romance and action, jules and mango sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g, kickass women being kickass, the slowest burn ever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-11-09 18:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11110773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: Julia Waxman has lived her entire life on the teetering edge of a cliff, the high spires of Raven's Roost. It is a town that should not exist, anchored on cragged stone pillars and tethered together with taut rope-and-plank bridges. Raven's Roost is a spiderweb city. Each node is a neighborhood, looping back on each other and toward the city center, where Governor Kalen's mansion and the buildings filled with bureaucrats sit.Or: There’s a revolution coming, Julia wants out of her hometown, and a stranger just fell out of the sky.





	1. A STRANGER SLAM DUNKS INTO TOWN

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is pretty much outlined and 3/4 complete, but unbetaed — (If anyone wants to beta, i'd be super down). huge fuckin thanks to shar, bryan, and aaron for letting me post chunks o' this in the groupchat and for the encouragement <3 
> 
> Expect a short update midweek and a long update on weekends (trust me, it makes sense), but I suggest subscribing if you wanna keep up with it.
> 
> NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: as of episode 66, this is an au! thanks griffin for invalidating my fan content of ur wonderful media. i might go back and edit this so that it's canon compliant but eh, au is fun.

Julia Waxman has lived her entire life on the teetering edge of a cliff, the high spires of Raven's Roost. It is a town that should not exist, anchored on cragged stone pillars and tethered together with taut rope-and-plank bridges. Raven's Roost is a spiderweb city. Each node is a neighborhood, looping back on each other and toward the city center, where Governor Kalen's mansion and the buildings filled with bureaucrats sit.  
  
Raven's Roost is known for its craftsmen. The Governor's Mansion used to be a monastery, the bygone monks having believed that the pursuit of perfection was the road to enlightenment. Eventually travelers came and asked to learn. The monks had no reason to turn them away. And slowly, as the decades and centuries passed, religion was worn away, leaving only a tradition of craft, an ancient mansion, and the inglorious town built on spires — it wasn't even a town, until Governor Kalen proposed a central government knitting the different neighborhoods together. Raven's Roost survives mostly on trade these days.  
  
The Waxmans have lived in Ravens Roost for generations, long before the town was named. Julia's father tells her that she can trace her lineage back to one of the original monks, a young woman who gave up the solitary pursuit of her craft for the less solitary embrace of a beautiful, wandering bard. Her father tells her this story because Steven wants his daughter to feel pride in her heritage. Julia has learned woodcarving and blacksmithery from when she was strong enough to hold a hammer. She can forge a sword in her sleep. Steven intends to gift the Hammer and Tongs to Julia when she turns 21. He expects that soon after, she will marry a local boy – or girl — perhaps that nice Alex kid who works the next bridge over.  
  
Julia, nineteen and headstrong, feels trapped. She spends most of her time (when not at the forge) reading adventure novels, or sitting on the edge of Craftsman's Corridor staring at the trade wagons traveling back and forth. They're brightly colored boxes which trundle slowly into the horizon. She imagines the cities they will go to, the ports they will arrive at, the deserts they will cross. The Hammer and Tongs has been the Waxmans for seven generations. Julia will be the eighth. She scowls when she thinks about it, and throws a stone over the edge of the spire. Julia's not supposed to do that. It could hit someone.  
  
Here is the truth of the thing. If not for Magnus, Julia would have left. Julia would have taken four months of her savings and bought a horse and some provisions at the larger trade-town three miles from Raven's Roost. She would have gone to Neverwinter, she would have traveled, she would have slain monsters and kissed strangers, she would have found treasure and uncovered mysteries. Julia would have been another adventurer who occasionally carved idle trinkets beside the campfire and thought wistfully(guiltily) about her father who has been left behind. Perhaps she would have returned with a fortune. Perhaps she would have died.  
  
But Julia, nineteen and headstrong, steals out in the middle of a warm summer night with four months worth of her savings and a hammer. She walks down the road to the trade-town three miles away. She is going to buy a horse and some provisions, and she is mentally calculating how much of her savings she can spend, when she hears a huge crashing boom. Whipping her head back, she sees, not far from where she was walking, a spray of dirt flying in the air. She thinks it is perhaps a meteorite. When she gets closer, she realizes that it is a crater.  
  
Julia peers down the rim. In the center, there is a man.  
  
_____  
  
The man doesn't stir when Julia kicks him with her boot. She kicks him a couple more times for good measure. When he doesn't move, she kneels down and places two fingers to his wrist. It might be blood that she feels, warm on his arm. Julia's not sure, but he has a pulse. She leans over his prone form. He's wearing a strange jacket and no shirt. The jacket is badly ripped up, and there’s a clear tear where something was pulled out of it.  
  
"Hey," Julia says. She slaps the man's face lightly. He doesn't acknowledge it. She slaps it harder. In the dim moonlight she can only make out the outlines of his features in monochrome. She thinks he's probably handsome, and definitely has thick hair and sideburns. She isn't sure if he's bleeding on his face, or if it's just water vapor beading on his skin from his fall from the stratosphere. Is he even human? He has a beating heart, at least.  
  
For a moment, she just stares down at him. Julia could leave the stranger, and continue on to the trade-town. Or she could carry him to the trade-town and leave him there. The man doesn't seem to have any possessions on him, or any sort of coin-purse. Julia thinks about all the lives she could lead, if she left the man behind.  
  
She sighs, and hoists the man up on her shoulders in a fireman's carry. She climbs out of the crater, and heads back to Raven's Roost. She'll take him home, and figure out the rest of it later.  
  
So late at night, the streets and bridges are deserted. The occasional gaslamp or candle flickers in a window. The man is heavy, and Julia almost regrets carrying him. Eventually, she reaches the back door of the Hammer and Tongs. She fumbles in her coin purse for her key. It's not there. Julia swears under her breath. She hadn't thought she'd needed her key, considering she wasn't planning on coming back.  
  
She knocks on the door, and waits. She's dreading the conversation with her father, when he wonders why she's been out so late. Soon, he opens the door.  
  
"Julia?" Steven says, astonished. "I thought you were asleep? Why are you out? What are you carrying? Is that a person?!"  
  
The last question takes precedence, and Steven ushers Julia inside and clears the kitchen table off hastily. She drops the man ungraciously on it, and he falls with a loud thump. Oops. Her father hastily clicks on a few gaslamps, and peers over the stranger.  
  
"What happened to him? Where did you find him? Who is he?"  
"I'm not sure. He's breathing, and I don't think he's hurt," she says. She leaves off the part about how she found him in a crater outside of town. "Do we need to call the doctor?"  
"I don't think so — but keep an eye on him, I'll go grab the first aid kit."  
  
Steven quickly walks out of the kitchen to grab the first aid kit from the bathroom. Meanwhile, Julia inspects the stranger lying on her kitchen table.  
  
The kitchen's flickering gaslamps illuminate more of the stranger's features. Julia was right — he's handsome, with curly hair, a crooked nose — he looks like a brawler, actually, one of those men whose likenesses feature on the posters for far-off wrestling leagues. He looks foreign. In the light, his jacket looks particularly strange. It's not of a cut she's seen before, and it's dyed a bright red, with an official looking gold trim. Perhaps he's a soldier? And yup, he's definitely bleeding.  
  
Julia has to admit, the man is an interesting mystery. She turns to damp a cloth in the sink. She's nobody's nursemaid, but it's probably unsanitary to let him bleed where they eat. She dabs uncertainly at his various cuts. Why isn't he dead? Considering his fall, he should have died instantly.  
  
Soon, her father comes clattering into the kitchen with the large wooden box where they keep the bandages, antiseptic wipes, and alcohol. He rummages through it, and hands her the bandages and a pair of scissors. She takes them, and watches Steven rip open a packet of antiseptic wipes.  
  
"Why were you out so late, Jules?" Steven asks. "Where did you find him? What about the curfew?"  
Julia looks away from her father's face. "I was just out. Don't worry about it." Her voice breaks a little bit on the end.  
"Jules —" Steven says, and sighs. "You did the right thing, bringing him back — cut his shirt off, it's un-salvagable – We'll talk about the rest later."  
  
They work in efficient silence for a few moments. Gas lamps flicker. The stranger doesn't stir.  
  
Steven glances at her. "You should head up, get some rest. I'll stay down here."  
"No, I can keep an eye on him," Julia says. "It's no trouble."  
"Jules."  
"Dad." Julia stares at her father plaintively. "Please? I'm the one who found him. And you have to open up the workshop tomorrow morning. It makes more sense for me to stay up, just in case."  
  
Steven acquiesces with a sigh. He kindly does not mention that the man is twice her size, and a stranger. He has more respect for his daughter's strength than that.  
  
"Keep your hammer by you, in case he wakes up agitated."  
Julia rolls her eyes. "Of course I will."  
  
Her father leaves the kitchen. Julia pulls out one of the kitchen tables, and a hunk of wood and her penknife that she had left on the countertop, settling in for a vigil. Just her, and the stranger.  
  
_________  
  
It's nearly three in the morning before the man wakes up. He yawns, and Julia nearly lops her thumb off in surprise. She sets down her wood and penknife and stands.  
  
"You up?" she asks, prodding the man's shoulder gently. The man scrunches his face up, then peers up at her, levering himself into sitting. He winces as he does it.  
  
"Where am I? Who're you?" The man asks, not nearly as panicked as Julia thinks he should be, considering the circumstances. She watches him carefully, one hand on her hammer.  
"You're the one who's been lying on my kitchen table for four hours. Who the hell are you?"  
  
"I'm," He pauses, scrunching his face up. "I'm Magnus Burnsides. I'm, I'm a— you know, I can't remember? I'm Magnus, I guess. I was leaving my town, last that I remember."  
  
Julia supposes that amnesia is not the worst side effect of being flung out of the sky. She helps him off the table.  
  
"Well, I found you in the middle of a crater after you crash-landed. The only town nearby is Johnston Tradepost. What happened?"  
"You know, I have no idea," Magnus says. "Wait, you're saying I fell from the sky?"  
"Like a goddamn meteor," Julia says solemnly.  
"Fuck," Magnus says, emphatically. "Well, your guess is as good as mine. Also, uh, not to be rude, but, who are you?"  
"Julia Waxmen, and you're in the Hammer and Tongs, in Raven's Roost."  
"Cool," Magnus nods. "I have no idea where any of that is."  
"Well," Julia says. "I guess if you want to sleep on the couch tonight."  
  
__________  
  
Julia sleeps in the next morning. She wakes up slow, clawing consciousness out molasses-like, blinking at the ceiling as it refocuses. It's made of hewn wood beams. She's woken up to this ceiling every day for the last nineteen years. Her clock reads 11:39 AM. Her dad's probably already in the shop, talking to customers or working on a project for somebody. She should probably join him, like she does every weekday.  
  
Instead, she goes to the kitchen first. She's hungry. She was supposed to be sixty miles out of town already.  
  
Inside, Magnus is eating a sandwich. In the midday sunlight, wearing one of her father's spare shirts, he looks far less foreign. Just another one of the burly young men who sometimes works in the forge. He looks up from his sandwich and smiles. Magnus smiles with his entire face, Julia notices.  
  
"Morning," Magnus says. "D'you want one? I can make you a sandwich. Least I can do."  
"You're still here," Julia says.  
"Do you want me to go?" Magnus asks, a line furrowing in his brow.  
"No, I'm just surprised. Sorry," Julia says. "I didn't mean it that way."  
  
She rummages in the cupboard for the coffee beans.  
  
"S-o. You remember anything?" Julia asks. "My dad talk to you yet?"  
"Who's your dad — oh, Steven must be your dad. He's really nice."  
"You talked with him?"  
"Yeah. He quizzed me on what I remembered, and told me that he'd call a doctor, later today."  
"Mm."  
  
Julia pulls out the beans and pours them into the grinder. For a few minutes, the kitchen is filled with a loud whirring. When they're ground, Julia unplugs the machine and turns to Magnus.  
  
"I didn't tell my dad about the crater, so maybe don't mention it to him, or Dr. Sylvester."  
Magnus nods, and frowns.  
"You know, I don't have any proof that what you're telling me is true. Not that I don't believe you, but it's kind of a stretch, you know?"  
"I can show you," Julia says, leaving the coffee unmade.

__________  
  
**INTERLUDE: MAGNUS**  
  
It doesn't feel like he's missing anything, but there's a definite gap between what he last remembers (leaving his town) and what he woke up to (beautiful woman leaning over him). It's possible that he was the target of a spell, he figures. He knows he's an adventurer, or at least planning on going adventuring. He already inspected his appearance in the mirror, and he doesn't look significantly different than he remembers — except for the faintest hint of a black eye, and the cuts and scrapes that litter his skin. So he can't be missing too much time.  
  
Julia (Steven called her Jules, he remembers) leads him out the back door and around the forge, calling out to her father, "I'm going to go show Magnus around!" Steven raises a hand in acknowledgement. Magnus smiles and waves at him. The least Magnus can do is be friendly. They've let him, a stranger, into their home.  
  
The Hammer and Tongs is located on a fairly wide boulevard, with enough room for two carts, near the ramp that spirals around Craftsman's Corridor. But Julia leads him down narrow alleyways and cobblestone streets.  
  
"We could just go down, but I don't want my dad getting suspicious of why we're going downspire," Julia explains, as they duck beneath someone's hanging laundry. "We'll run across Craftman's, cross over to Central, and then loop down on the ramp there. You should see Central, anyway, that's where most of the stuff is."  
  
"Alright, Magnus says, with precisely zero idea of what Julia means.  
  
She leads him through a street filled with glassblowers, then another one filled with men and women delicately linking filigree silver chains. The air is filled with hot steam and the din of metal clanging on metal, laughter and yelling floating upward, the rattle of cart wheels on cobblestone.  
  
"What's with all the workshops?" Magnus asks, as they swerve to dodge a cart.  
"It's called Craftman's Corridor for a reason," Julia says. "Pretty much all the workshops and forges are in this neighborhood."  
"And your dad's a blacksmith."  
"A carpenter, too. But I do most of the smithing these days; he does most of the woodworking."  
"Well, you've got the guns for it," Magnus says. Julia, pleased, smiles and flexes. He appreciates the sight.  
"I know. Carried you up here, didn't I? Oh — this way." She directs him over to follow her down a stone staircase that leads to a swaying rope bridge which villagers walk across, seemingly unaware of the thousands of feet of empty air that stand between them and the ground. There's a river too, which does not inspire confidence. Julia steps onto the bridge unhesitatingly, weaving around pedestrians. Magnus pauses before following her. She stops, and turns to him. "Well, c'mon!" Julia doesn't seem to understand why the bridge could be terrifying.  
  
Magnus is acutely aware of how much of a stranger he is here. He steps forward, and follows her. He tries not to look down.  
  
"Have they ever broken?" Magnus asks, steadily looking up.  
"Not that I can remember," Julia says, and leads him off of the bridge and onto a new street which is significantly neater than the one they have come from. They walk down long boulevards, which eventually lead into a sloping ramp. There's an anemic but steady stream of travelers going both up and down the ramp.  
  
They descend, circling around and around the spire until they reach the dusty road at the bottom. it's one of five roads that converge from the spires, leading into the east. Roads, at least he is familiar with. There is something comfortingly normal about an empty dirt road.  
  
She leads him down the road, but soon veers off of it into the scrublands. Magnus follows her. Soon, he sees the rim of a crater, nearly knee-high in some places, curving into a smooth bowl that looks almost like it's been carved out of the earth. Magnus peers over the rim.  
  
"See?" Julia says. "I wasn't kidding."  
  
In the middle of the crater there is a clear imprint of a man etched into the earth. Magnus imagines that if he laid down in it, it would fit him like a glove.  
  
"Shit," he says, with feeling.  
"Yeah."  
"Guess you can't fake that," Magnus says, and pretends that it doesn't bother him that he has no memory of falling.  
  
__________  
  
They walk back to town together.  
  
"So we should maybe not talk about the crater," Magnus says.  
"Uh, yeah. That was my entire point. I'll just say that I found you in the middle of the street," Julia says. "And you just keep claiming that you don't remember anything about crashing."  
"I don't remember anything," Magnus says.  
"See, just like that."  
  
They walk off the ramp and onto the main boulevard. It's been about an hour since they left the forge. In the early afternoon, workers are taking their lunch breaks, buying sandwiches and takeout cartons of rice and chicken from roadside  
  
"Hey, do you want an actual tour?" Julia asks. "I don't mind showing you around." She's feeling charitable, now that Magnus believes her.  
"That'd be great," he says, and then, "you know, it seems like a weird place to build a town, on a bunch of tall rocks."  
  
"It only technically became a town fifteen years ago or so," Julia says. "Although all the spires were already here."  
"What happened?"  
"Do you want the long story or the short story?"  
"Uh, the long story, I guess."  
"Well, so this used to be a temple, like, a million years ago. But the monks who lived here were crazy good craftsmen, mostly, and so people started moving here to learn, and some of them decided to stay, and build houses and stuff on the different spires. And that was chill for a long time. But eventually, Kalen went around to all the spires and convinced them that having a sort of centralized government and guard force would be to everyone's benefit, and would probably help with negotiating with traders. So, Raven's Roost," Julia says.  
"Huh," Magnus says. "That was a pretty short long story."  
"Well, sometimes you don't get what you want," Julia says, and pulls Magnus toward a sidestreet. "C'mon stranger, let's give you the grand tour."  
  
Julia leads him down the street, explaining that Central is where all the government buildings are, and also some good restaurants, and some of the nicer stores, that Craftsman's is where most of the forges are and some workers live, that Seamstess's spire is known basically for having the red light district, but has some of the more interesting stuff in town, and that the rest of the spires are basically just residential. It's a town like most other towns, just built on a bunch of stone pillars. While she tells him this, they walk across rope bridges and through streets. She buys both of them lunch from her favorite takeaway place, and they eat it sitting on a bench.  
  
Julia's surprised to find that she likes Magnus. He laughs at her jokes and doesn't get mad when she teases him — more than some boys give her. He needles her back, and tells her about his hometown. For a amnesia skyboy, he seems pretty normal. She's explaining the current craze for milk tea with little tapioca bubbles when someone drapes their arms around her shoulders. Julia tenses. Beside her, Magnus shifts as though to draw a sword, and then looks a little lost to find that he doesn't have one.  
  
"Hey Ju-li-a," A voice she knows intimately floats over her shoulders, and Julia relaxes.  
"Jeez, Alex, don't scare me like that," Julia says, turning to look at her friend. Alex smiles. "Who's your friend?"  
  
Julia pauses.  
  
"Uh, Magnus, meet Alex. Alex, meet Magnus."  
"Hail, and well met," Magnus says. Julia squints at him. Alex laughs.  
"Nice to meet you too. So how do you guys know each other?"  
"Uh," Magnus hesitates.  
"Well," Julia says, "Hey Magnus? Didn't you have some sort of appointment?"  
"Yeah!" Magnus says in a rush, "Yeah, I should get going to that, I'll see you later."  
"Can you find your way back?"  
"Yeah," Magnus says. "I'll be fine. Thanks for showing me around, Jules."  
  
He waves, and walks away from the pair of women, who watch him disappear. Alex turns to Julia.  
  
"So who's that, actually?" Alex asks. "He's kind of cute. Did he just call you Jules?"  
"It's a long story," Julia says. Alex puts an arm over Julia's shoulder and leans on her.  
"Well, you can tell me all about it over coffee. I just got off of work, and it's your turn to buy, and you can tell me all about your new boyfriend."  
"Alex!"  
  
Alex is Julia's best friend. They met in preschool, exchanged pinky-promises to be best friends forever. They swapped blood in middle school after reading Brotherhood of the Adventure Boys and got yelled at by Alex's dad, who was a doctor. They dated for a few months when they were fifteen, and broke up after the night they experimented with kissing and couldn't keep going because they were both laughing too hard to continue. It wasn't the worst way to realize that you and somebody were romantically incompatible.  
  
Now, Alex has a job as a secretary at the Governor's office and a healthy interest in Julia's love life. Julia can't complain. She also pays more attention to Alex's rotating stable of lovers than she needs to.  
  
Alex leads her to the coffee shop that they usually go to, the one that makes the foam art on their lattes. They take a seat outside, where the street noise provides a good cover for discussion. They must look strange sitting together, Julia thinks, not for the first time, what with her in old work leggings and an dress with no makeup, and Alex with her perfectly ironed shirt and skirt, hair carefully pinned back. Alex doesn't seem to notice, instead leaning forward and saying, "So. Magnus. Who is he?"  
  
Julia sighs. "It's not what you think. I found him last night, when I was walking outside of town. He was unconscious, and I dragged him back home 'cause I didn't know where else to take him."  
"Wait, you were leaving? You promised you would tell me when you left!"  
Julia grins sheepishly. "I would have sent a letter? It doesn't matter now, anyway. I can't leave dad alone in the house."  
"Is he staying? Do you know anything about him?"  
"I showed him around town; he seems pretty normal. But I don't think he's going to stay," Julia says. "It's not like he has anything keeping him here, and there are probably people missing him."  
"Mm," Alex says, somehow perfectly insinuating that perhaps, Julia is what would keep Magnus here. Julia ignores it, and demands "Tell me about work."  
  
Alex shrugs, as if interning as a secretary for the governor when one is barely twenty is perfectly normal.  
  
"It's the usual. I write up papers, edit his speeches. You know, gruntwork. He's raised taxes, again, too."  
"Again?!"  
"Just this morning. I saw the signed document on his desk. It's probably going to be announced tomorrow."  
"That's the third time this year," Julia says.  
"It's for transport and upkeep, allegedly. But you know —"  
  
Alex looks down, immediately engrossed by her coffee. A pair of Kalen's guardsmen walk past them, their gold breastplates glinting. Their eyes slide right past Julia and Alex. Just two young women getting coffee, nothing suspicious about that.  
  
"If this keeps up," Julia says. She doesn't finish the statement.  
Alex shrugs. "If it comes to that, well. It's not going to get that bad. Maybe a couple of protests, at the worst." 


	2. Interlude: Magnus

**Interlude: Magnus**  
  
"Well son, it doesn't seem like you're missing that much," The doctor (whose name Magnus has forgotten) says, smiling reassuringly. "Either you'll remember, or you won't — although you might want to call a cleric or a wizard to make sure it isn't some sort of magical block. Still, doesn't seem like any sort of permanent impairment."  
  
Magnus nods. The doctor nods back.  
  
"Now, considering what I've heard about your circumstances, I think we can waive the fee—" Steven interjects, "Jim, I'm paying for it, don't worry —" The doctor re-interjects, "Steven, our daughters have been friends for more than a decade. Don't worry about it."  
  
There's some more grumbling, and insistences of repayment that eventually lead to the two men agreeing to get a drink together sometime later that week at the local. The doctor, having packed up his supplies, heads out the back door with a stern directive to "keep those scratches clean, you don't need to risk an infection!" Magnus nods earnestly. Steven sees the doctor out.  
  
Magnus sits down at the kitchen table, wondering why he's so tired. He rests his forehead on the kitchen table. Where's he going to stay? The doctor has him thinking about money. He doesn't even own a shirt, right now. Which is sort of a temporary problem. There's always a job that needs doing. The sound of Steven re-entering the room prompts Magnus to raise his head.  
  
"If you want to stay 'til you get your bearings, son, we've got a spare room. Or at least a couch," Steven says.  
"You're very kind," Magnus says. Steven smiles at him, his crows feet crinkling.  
"Well, we've got the space. Might have to build a bedframe, though. And if you want to help out with the chores, that'd be appreciated as well."  
"Of course," Magnus says, mentally thinking about what he can do to help out around the house. This isn't where he expected to be, from what he can last remember, but well, he planned on getting out of his hometown anyway. And this isn't the worst place he could be. Well, he could have his money and all his stuff, but.  
  
With perfect narrative timing, Julia walks in through the back door. Magnus turns to look at her. Their eyes meet.  
  
"Hey," Julia says. "So you're not irreparably brain-damaged?"  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu @anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com for more of this, whatever this is. thanx for reading!


	3. INTEGRATION INTO THE SYSTEM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> featuring a cameo by an old friend

Magnus slots himself into Julia’s life like a octagon in a circular slot. That is to say, with difficulty, but with ultimate success. He stays through fall, and winter, and again around to the following spring. Steven starts teaching him to carve after the first month. Magnus pulls his weight, she has to admit. He makes breakfast most mornings, helps out around the house, carries heavy objects for Steven when he asks. Julia can carry her own heavy objects, thank you very much.  
  
He doesn’t leave. Steven never insinuates that it might be time for him to start moving on. Her father is fond of Magnus, Julia realizes. She wonders whether her father wanted a son, not a daughter.  
  
Julia is not ladylike. She does a good impression of it if she puts some elbow grease into her appearance, but she’s no immaculately-manicured, petite Alex. She has lovely hair at least, thick and shiny, but usually bound in a sweaty braid or bun. Her arms are covered in nicks and healed scratches and burn scars, and she spends more time beating metal than winging eyeliner. She knows she’s pretty, but beauty doesn’t smelt iron, even if it does make the boys and girls blush. Being her father’s daughter means that the forge comes first, though he’s never directly insinuated it.  
  
Magnus offers to pay rent, after the first few weeks. This is after they’ve built a bed for the spare room and brought an ancient mattress down from the attic and aired it outside in the back alley. “Ah, so he’s not going to continue sleeping in Julia’s bed, then,” her friends who work at her forge and the neighboring workshops say with a wink and a nudge. When Julia yells at them, they apologize with the caveat that it’s “All in good fun!”  
  
She fumes about it, and rants about it to Alex, who listens sympathetically and says, “He’s living with you, babe, of course Kat and Erica and the rest are teasing.” In response, Julia grills Alex mercilessly about her new girlfriend. And then Alex asks her, cruelly, about when she’s going to leave. Julia says she’s going to leave after Magnus goes. She can’t leave her dad alone with a stranger, even if the stranger isn’t so much a stranger anymore, and is slowly being absorbed into their household. Even if her dad calls him his apprentice.  
  
When Magnus offers to pay rent for the first time, Steven laughs, not unkindly, and says “With what money, Magnus?” to which Magnus sheepishly shrugs. It’s been a month and he hasn’t thought about getting a job yet. He’s been helping out in the forge and the workshop, but neither of those are jobs precisely.  
  
The next day he disappears after lunch. The day after, he bolts out the door after breakfast. The day after that, he checks the clock around 2:30 and says “See you later, Jules, I’ll be back after dinner.” And the string of disappearances continues. He’s gone for at least half a day per diem, now.  
  
At first, Julia misses him a little. She’s grown used to having him around the forge, occasionally stirring coals, or bringing her a spare hammer or just being general company, or sitting in the workshop carefully shaving bits of wood off of spare chunks under Steven’s direction and coming to check on her every couple of hours, sometimes bringing her a glass of tea or something.  
  
Julia doesn’t ask him about it. She figures that he’s got his own life to live, and it’s been long enough that he knows the area. She’s busy, anyway. Magnus isn’t that important a part of her life. She’s got orders to fill, friends to see, books to read, a trip to plan. Even if Magnus isn’t gone by the end of summer, she thinks she’s going to leave. It’s easy to get sucked into the rhythm of life in Craftsmen’s Corridor, but she’s got a postcard of the ocean stuck to the ceiling above her bed and it’s the first thing she sees before she goes to sleep and the first thing she sees before she wakes up.  
  
She learns what he’s been doing when she catches him in the middle of the street holding the leashes of six dogs. He’s practically parting traffic, a man surrounded with an orbiting field of dogs. Julia gapes, her errand forgotten. “Magnus!” She shouts. He turns and beams. With his free hand, he waves enthusiastically at her. Julia runs up to him, hyperaware of the scene they’re causing in the street.  
  
“What are you doing?” she asks.  
“Oh, well, it’s my job. I’m a dog walker,” Magnus says, still smiling.  
“Is that what you’ve been doing when you’re gone?”  
“Well, this, and coaching little league, and courier-ing,” he explains. “I’m trying to make some money to pay you and your dad back.”  
“Why?” Julia blurts out.  
“Cause I’ve been staying with you for so long, and I don’t know, I feel like I ought to pay you back, like rent or something,” Magnus explains, his words trailing out.  
“He won’t let you,” Julia says. Magnus shrugs.  
“I’ve gotta try. You want to help me finish walking these dogs?” he says, hopeful.  
“Sure,” Julia says. Magnus is very hard to say no to, and the dogs are looking at her with bright eyes.  
  
________  
  
It’s only by chance that Julia hears the conclusion of the rent argument. It’s after dinner, and Julia had volunteered to take care of the dishes, because that’s really the only thing she’s any good at in the kitchen. As she’s wiping the water off of the last bowl, raised voices echo from the living room. Curious, she puts an ear to the door.  
  
“— ying that I should be helping out more,” Magnus’s voice rings.  
“Magnus. Son. I don’t need any rent from you. You sleep in my spare room and make breakfast, and Julia likes you,” Steven says, exasperated. “And besides, you’re my apprentice. I’m supposed to pay for your room and board."  
“Julia likes me?” Magnus says.  
“I’ll let you figure that one out,” Steven says, rolling his eyes. He called Magnus “son,” Julia thinks. She slinks away from the door, and pretends to be engrossed in a novel — “The Curse of the Dark Amulet” — when her father opens the door and goes through the kitchen, absentmindedly ruffling Julia’s hair as he walks by.  
  
The next weekend, Magnus takes her to the new cafe that opened up two spires over, the one that makes the weird waffles that all the teenagers like. They’re cute little squares bubbled all over with cake rounds, topped with magically-frozen ice cream and fruit. She’d been wanting to try it for a couple of weeks, but never had the chance to visit. Work has been busy. They sit near the window, at a table with two seats, and Magnus steals a bite of her ice cream because he “wanted to see what it would taste like, don’t be mad, Jules.”  
  
Outside the window in the town square, a gnome tacks the newest list of Governor’s Decrees to one of the many information poles around the city.  
  
But Julia doesn’t notice, because she’s watching Magnus eat ice cream and realizing, with dawning horror, that the two of them look like they are on a date.  
  
_______  
  
"There's a show in town," Magnus says, one Saturday morning as he cracks eggs into a pan.  
"Is there?" Julia says, toasting six slices of toast next to him on the stove. It's all terribly domestic. She kind of hates it, how he's slotted himself into her and her father's life, how the extra storeroom has a bed in it now, how she caught her father telling Magnus that he "showed some real talent at woodcarving." She doesn't know why Magnus is still here. She doesn't want him to be her father's new apprentice.  
  
"There is," Magnus says, seemingly ignorant of her sarcasm. "I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?"  
Julia shrugs, and flips the toast. "I was going to go shopping with Alex," she says. It's a weak argument and she knows it. Magnus nudges her shoulder.  
"C'mon Jules," he says. "It'll be fun. It's a cooking show. They'll have free samples."  
"Great, go by yourself. There'll be more samples for you, then."  
"It's not going to be any fun without you. You'll enjoy it. I promise," Magnus says. He slides the eggs out onto two plates, and cracks a third pair into the pan. Julia watches him delicately crack eggshells. He looks ridiculous, between his large hands and the small eggs. He's lit by the slanted morning sunlight.  
"Fine," she says. "But if it's boring, I'm leaving."  
"Okay," Magnus says, and passes her one of the plates of eggs. She takes it, and passes him the toast.  
  
The show is outside of town, because it would be wildly time consuming to bring all the carts up to Central, and the square up there isn’t nearly large enough to accommodate all the vehicles and tents and the wooden stage that has been put together. There have been flyers for the Traveling Variety shows that were going to be in town over the weekend pasted on walls all over the city. Julia and Magnus are only two of the many people who are going downspire to see it.  
  
Near the start of the ramp, there is a set of colorful tents and carts, with vendors and crowds milling around. Kids dash around legs in small groups, shrieking gleefully. The air smells mostly like popcorn and sugar. It’s festive, it reminds Julia of being five and going to the fair with her dad and being entranced by the sights and smells. Magnus looks around, wide eyed, as if this is a completely new experience for him. Julia notices a signboard with the times of the shows pinned up on it.  
  
“There’s the magic cooking show that you mentioned on at six, and before that, there’s an….acrobatics thing? Then a play, and they’re doing fireworks later, too. So-o, you want to look around before they start?”  
  
They wander around the tents where TV employees are hawking caramel popcorn and weird fried things. Magnus buys himself a weird fried thing, and offers to buy Julia one too. She declines, and he buys her a milkshake instead. They go play rigged carnival games and mostly fail to win at any of them. Julia beats Magnus at a milk-can-toss game and gives him the prize stuffed dog plush. He’s delighted. She watches him throw darts at a target with a look of utmost concentration on his face.  
  
"Is this a date?" she asks.  
"Only if you want it to be," Magnus says. Julia shrugs.  
  
“Buy me some cotton candy,” she says instead. He does. They don’t talk about it.  
  
It’s a little bit awkward after that, the two of them walking next to each other with a scrupulous half-foot between them, the unanswered question hanging in the air above them like a curse. But they go together to the show and catch the tail end of the acrobatics thing (Julia’s pretty sure that people weren’t meant to bend that way), and a man starts setting up for the magic cooking show. In front of him, an elf with platinum-blond hair wearing an apron that reads SIZZLE IT UP! saunters over to greet the audience, casting an enchantment to sonically enhance his voice.  
  
“Uh hi, I’m Taako, and this is Sizzle it Up with Taako, can I get some noise from my dudes?” There’s a cheer from the crowd, and the elf grins, snapping his fingers and materializing a frying pan out of thin air. “Al-right! Now that’s what I like to hear! ‘Kay my guys, let’s get fucking cooking!”  
  
The elf then proceeds to put on a magical culinary extravaganza, burning through spells and tossing ingredients into the air, all the while narrating and relating anecdotes. The crowd eats it up. The man’s charismatic, and his show is entertaining, and Julia is glad that Magnus asked her to come with him.  
  
“He’s pretty good,” Magnus says, stabbing his little cup of pasta with a toothpick.  
“Mmhm,” Julia says through a mouthful.  
“I kind of want one of those t-shirts,” he says thoughtfully. Julia rolls her eyes.  
  
It’s late before they think about heading back. They had watched the other shows, and eaten more junk food, and Magnus had bought a shirt that said SIZZLE IT UP WITH TAAKO! in bright pink. The fireworks had gone off, bright bursts of magically-enhanced light, and as they fade from the sky Julia watches them dissipate, Magnus sitting crosslegged next to her.  
  
When the last light fades, they get up and start walking back. The crowd is thick by the ramp, and they elbow their way through it to find two guards with shining swords strapped to their backs.  
  
“Security checkpoint,” the guard on the left says. “Bringing any weapons into the city? Contraband?”  
He has Julia open her purse, and Magnus open the bags attached to his belt. He nods politely and ushers them through after he’s seen that the only things they have are coins and, in Magnus’s case, hard candies. They walk up the ramp, Julia glancing back at the guards blocking the road and the people waiting patiently to get back into the city.  
  
"There weren't checkpoints, before." Magnus says, as they walk back to the forge together.  
"No," Julia says, frowning. "There weren't."  
  
_______  
  
Julia starts trying to avoid Magnus after that. Tries, because as soon as she starts, he’s everywhere. Metaphorically. People know him now, and instead of asking Julia about the stranger, they tell her to say hello to Magnus, to tell him that their kid thinks the world of him, to ask him out already, what are you waiting for? Magnus has enmeshed himself in Craftsman's Corridor more in a year than Julia has done in twenty.  
  
“Everyone thinks I’m dating you,” Julia says. “Yesterday Old Lady Aeronwyn down at the market asked when we would be getting married.”  
Magnus laughs. “She always asks me when I’m going to propose to you.”  
  
If it were happening to anyone else, Julia would think it’s funny. But it’s her life and she is very much not pleased with how Magnus, though through no fault of his own, is usurping her place in her life, in her town. He’s her father’s apprentice. The town loves him. He buys her paperbacks he thinks she’ll like with his spare paychecks.  
  
Here’s the thing: it would be easy to fall in love with Magnus. It would be easy to tell him “Yes, this is a date,” and then two years later they would be married, and they’d own the forge together and she’d have a couple of kids and then it would be ten years later and she would have never gone farther than the trade-town three miles away. She would probably be happy, Julia thinks, lying on her bed staring at the postcard taped up to the ceiling.  
  
Julia spends a lot of time that summer reading novels on the roof when she’s not at the forge, or throwing rocks over the edge of the spire in the little rocky outcrop that nobody really goes to. Magnus doesn’t know about either place, and there’s nobody else to bother her in either spot. Sometimes she gets lunch with Alex, who tells her in hushed tones about what’s happening behind the closed doors of the governor’s office. Things are getting tense, between the Governor and the council, apparently. But at the end of the day, Julia goes home, and has dinner with Magnus and her father, and listens to them talk about what they did in the workshop that day.  
  
Maybe it would be easier to leave, with things like this. Her dad has Magnus to help in the shop. If she leaves now, she can rest assured that there’s somebody to take over the shop. Let Magnus have her legacy, if he’s so intent on staying.  
  
But import and export taxes were raised a few weeks ago, and there’s a curfew and a checkpoints at the bottoms of the spires now. “They’re tightening regulations,” Alex tells her, “Not sure why.”  
  
Prices are going up everywhere. At the greengrocer, the general store, the wholesalers. Even at the local. “Sorry sweets,” Van says sympathetically when she mentions it. “Import tax went up, and we couldn’t afford to not raise the prices on drinks.” He pours her a drink and tops it with an extra umbrella as an apology.  
  
There’s only the faintest hint of social unrest. People say that maybe all these regulations are because of economic ripples from Neverwinter or Caeres, faraway metropolises who determine the economic health of hundreds and hundreds of small villages. People whisper over flagons and coffee cups, around hearths and on street corners.  
  
Maybe she should stay, just in case things get more heated. But it’ll probably die down by the end of summer, that’s what Alex and Van and everyone else says. The council will keep the governor in check. As soon as things get better, as soon as Magnus is skilled enough to take over some of her dad’s work, then she’s out of here.  
  
Julia keeps a satchel packed and ready to go, hidden in the back of her closet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> funfact: almost all the oc's are from the dnd campaign im in lmao. thanks for reading! xoxo
> 
> we're heading out of the setup pretty soon - come talk to me on tumblr about this if ya want i have so many feelings about this fic and will probably give you spoilers, ahaha.


	4. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus has feelings

“Have you asked Julia ouuuut yet?” Kimmy, the kid he babysits on Thursday afternoons asks.  
  
“Nah,” Magnus says, because the rest of the story is too complicated. After that day at the show, neither of them have brought up dating. But he buys Julia paperbacks because he always sees her reading them. She accepts them. He asks her to go with him to shows, to dinner, to coffee. She almost always says yes. He lingers in the forge when she’s working, and she never tells him to go.  
  
They spend long Sunday afternoons sitting next to each other on the couch, listening to the fantasy radio. Julia teaches him how to carve a duck with a penknife. She patches him up with novelty bandaids when he nicks himself, and tells him that he’s “pretty good at this, have you done this before?”  
  
He knows that Julia hates that everyone thinks that they are dating, that everyone thinks they are inevitable. She complains about it sometimes, as if it’s his fault. But Magnus secretly likes it, he likes that the world can see that were Julia to love him, then the two of them would fit together like puzzle pieces. He likes the promise of certainty, he likes imagining a hypothetical life together. Julia would be easy to fall in love with. He’s half in love with he already. He still hasn’t actually asked her out.  
  
This town has settled under his skin, but Magnus knows that Julia wants to leave. She doesn’t talk about it much, but he catches her staring at posters advertising HEROES FOR HIRE! SEE NEW LANDS AND EXCITING PLACES. She disappears for hours at a time, and he knows that she’s going to the edge of the spire to throw rocks off the edge and stare at the traveling caravans. Magnus followed her there once, out of curiosity. He doesn’t know why she wants to leave, and he knows that he doesn’t want her to. Magnus wants more long afternoons laughing on the couch, he wants her to show him how to carve all sorts of animals. He wants to surprise her from behind with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He wants to linger in bed with her on cold winter mornings, the liberty to touch her.  
  
She makes him want to give her a reason to stay. She makes him want to be her reason to stay.  
He’s trying. Gods help him, he’s trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> right, this wraps up the "intro" bits. time to plunge into r e v o l u t i o n. 
> 
> also, thank you for all your lovely comments, y'all are the best and i love you all dearly. see you this weekend for that good good long update.


	5. FROGS IN A POT, SLOWLY BOILING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guess what time it is? its revolution time!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is pretty OC heavy just cause....revolution takes more than a couple of people, lol. hope u like the new friends. 
> 
> and shoutout to Voidfishes (how the heck do you link people) for beta'ing this chapter! u rock my guy <3

The revolution starts in a bar. It’s Van’s birthday, but he couldn’t beg off work, so their group of friends came to him. It’s Julia and Alex and Van’s fiance Aramil, along with Lillian and Helga and Charmie. They don’t see each other much — they lived in the same neighborhood when they were younger, but nearly everyone has moved since then. Van bartends and takes correspondence courses in magic, Aramil is part of the sorcerer’s guild, Lillian is on the city council, Helga is part of the guard force, and Charmie plays music for three different nightclubs. Everyone asks where Magnus is, and Julia rolls her eyes and admits, “He’s at work.”  
  
It’s been months since they’ve seen each other together. Helga brought Van a paper crown that sheds sparkles everywhere, and they’re all a little sloshed because Van keeps pouring drinks, saying “It’s my job, I’m just doing my job.”  
  
Naturally, they’re talking politics.  
  
New regulations have been appearing week by week, posted on signboards. Their origin is enigmatic, but the laws are enforced by the guards, who seem to multiply every week.  
  
"He wants Raven's Roost as his own personal golden goose,” Aramil says. The prices of spell components — almost all imports, rose yesterday, and Aramil is feeling bitter. “And he’s going to squeeze our necks until we’re dead.”  
  
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Van says, rolling his eyes. “He can’t keep this up without the council keeping him in check.” Aramil turns to his fiance, “Well what about the guards at the feet of the spires? Who authorized that?”  
  
“A lot of people approve, actually. Say that it’s keeping the riffraff out,” Alex cuts in. “We’re doing our best,” Lillian says, at the same time.  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Aramil says. “Both things, I mean.”  
  
“No, there’s only so much the council can do, especially right now, because it’s a very divided house and there’s been a lot of gridlock. I think a lot of councilors are taking bribes, actually, but I don’t have any proof. Either way, Kalen’s having a far easier time than he should, issuing decrees,” Lillian explains. “I don’t know where this is going to end.”  
  
“And it’s not like he doesn’t have popular support,” Alex adds. “He says that all the extra tax money is going toward defense — I should know, I edit his speeches,” she finished bitterly.  
  
Silence, for a moment.  
  
“Anyway, Helga, where are the new guards coming from? No way they’re all from here,” Charmie asks, breaking the silence.  
  
“They’re mostly foreigners,” Helga says.  
"We don't need all these soldiers,” Charmie says. “Though at least they spend well,” Van adds.  
"They're not here to protect us from anything, they're here for Kalen to protect himself from us,” Julia says, and Van laughs. “Up the revolution! Cheers,” and they clink glasses together and drink. Aramil frowns.  
  
“We should do something, you know? Get a bunch of people together and march. We can’t let him treat us this way. Have a riot or something,” he says.  
  
“Not a riot,” Lillian says, “A protest.”  
  
On a bar napkin, stained with wine and flecked with glitter, the initial plans for a protest are etched out.  
  
__________  
  
After Van’s birthday celebration turned protest planning session, Julia walks home. The warm buzz from her drinks is fading. In the dark night, away from the warm gaslamp glow and chatter of the bar, the protest seems premature, maybe foolish. There are seven of them. Julia isn’t even particularly invested in politics. That’s Aramil, Alex, and Lillian. Julia works at the forge and daydreams about leaving. Maybe she ought to leave the protest to those who care. But what Kalen is doing is wrong.  
  
Heart still wavering, she opens the kitchen door. She told her friends that she would help. Helping will probably benefit her city. It’s the right decision, she thinks, but can’t help her uncertainty.  
  
“Had a good time?” Magnus asks, from where he’s putting his jacket on the coatrack. He must have just gotten home.  
“It was great,” Julia says, and walks up the stairs. She doesn’t say anything about the protest. Magnus doesn’t need to know about that. He would join the cause in a heartbeat.  
  
__________  
  
A protest works when the government is playing fair. When there is a contract between the people and the government for all allowance of free speech, then, a protest is a signal of public dissent, a declamation that we the populace are united and will not stand for this.  
  
A protest in a corrupt government is another story altogether.  
  
__________  
  
The afternoon of the protest is hot and dry. Bonfire weather. It’s been a week since their first planning session, and they’ve managed to assemble a fairly sizable crowd. At least a few hundred people, which isn’t bad for something that spread mostly through word of mouth. Julia stands near the front, next to Alex. They’ve decided to meet at Van’s apartment in case things go wrong — he’s the only one who lives alone.  
  
There are posters. There is chanting. There is the ebullient sense that perhaps what they are doing matters. They march down the main street up to the Governor’s Mansion, where they are greeted by a wall of guards.  
  
“Stand down, we’re authorized to attack if you continue,” the guard says impassively. “Please disperse, or we’ll be forced to make you disperse.”  
“Citizens have the right to gather in public locations,” Lillian answers, crossing her arms. “Under whose authority are you here?”  
“Governor Kalen’s.”  
“That’s not something he gets to decide,” Lillian says. “The Governor has overstepped his bounds, and we aren’t leaving until our concerns are heard.”  
The guard steps forward. “You have five minutes to disperse, ma’am.”  
Lillian bares her teeth. “We’re not leaving.”  
  
Sweat drips down Julia’s neck. The sun beats overhead.  
  
The guard in charge pulls out his sword, points to the sky, and shouts a magically enhanced call. “FORWARD!”  
  
All hell breaks loose.  
  
“They’ve got mages!” Van hollers. Aramil, standing back-to-back with him, screams “They’re throwing spells at us, everybody get the fuck out!”  
  
Even without Aramil’s warning, it’s obvious that the guards are being aided by mages. Flying bursts of bright light coalesce into whirling black snares that grab at ankles, wrists, torsos, necks, and flashes of light end with a heap of people collapsed on the ground.  
  
Not to mention the guards brandishing swords.  
  
Protesters run in every direction. Julia, at the front of the crowd, dodges two badly aimed spells and dashes forward to meet the attackers head-on. She’s going to hold them off as long as she can, giving her friends all the extra seconds possible.  
  
Julia slams a guard into the ground, headbutts another man so that he falls, clutching his head. A woman slashes across Julia’s shoulder with her dagger, and Julia chokes back a scream. She stumbles back, shocked, right hand pressing down on her wound as if to stem the blood. The woman grins, bright teeth and a furrowed brow behind a gleaming helmet. Julia clenches her jaw and raises her right hand ready to punch, as soon as she sees an opening.  
  
A blue beam of light knocks the guard to the ground, and Charmie steps over the woman. Charmie’s holding Alex, who is slumped over and leaning heavily on Charmie’s shoulder.  
  
“She got hit by Sleep,” Charmie says, thrusting Alex’s unconscious body at Julia. “Take her and get out of here! I can’t carry her!”  
  
Julia hoists Alex one-handedly over her shoulder, and runs.  
__________  
  
Julia is the first one back at Van’s. She sets Alex down and sits down next to her, feeling lightheaded. She should probably bandage her shoulder.  
  
The others trickle in one by one over the next hour, with a variety of injuries. Julia herself has the nasty slash across her shoulder, bruised and sprained knuckles, a blooming bruise on her forehead, and she did something funny to her ankle while running.  
  
None of them are healers. Alex, once she wakes up, offers to call her dad, but the groups decides that bringing him in would require too much explanation. They inexpertly patch each other up, thoroughly emptying Van’s tiny first aid kit. They don’t talk about what happened, each of them a little glassy-eyed and stunned.  
  
Around ten, Julia glances at the clock. “Fuck. I’ve got to get home, before Dad or Magnus get worried.”  
  
This time, nobody teases Julia.  
__________  
  
Julia limps home. There is a light in the kitchen window that gives her pause. Someone’s there. She can’t come back looking like this if someone is waiting for her. Julia was hoping she would be able to walk up the stairs to her room to nurse her wounds in slightly painful peace. Maybe she’ll just go back to Van’s, come home in the morning.  
  
The kitchen door opens before she can decide. A bright rectangle of light illuminates her, partially obscured by the man standing in it.  
  
“Jules?” Magnus says. “Is that you? Oh, gods, your shoulder.” He steps toward her, and reaches out to peel away her sleeve. Oh, it must have bled through the bandage.  
“Go back inside, Magnus,” Julia hisses, flinching back. She winces, and stumbles.  
“What happened to your leg?” Magnus asks, alarmed. Julia tries to shrug, but her shoulder throbs. “It’s none of your business, Magnus.”  
“Uh, when you come home bleeding from a stab wound, it’s definitely my business,” Magnus says. “What happened?”  
“We’re not having this conversation here, my dad might notice.”  
“You’re not walking on that leg.”  
“We’re not talking about this in the house, or out here,” Julia says, her jaw set. Magnus frowns. He disappears back inside, but leaves the door open. Julia wasn’t expecting that. She stands there awkwardly for a moment, then turns to leave.  
  
And Magnus — indignity of indignities — sweeps her into a bridal carry. Julia slaps his chest. He ignores her. He’s carrying the first-aid box too. “Where are we going, then?”  
  
__________  
  
Julia makes him take her to the roof of the forge because she’s pissed and wants to make his life harder.  
  
Magnus sets her down next to the chimney, and opens the first aid kit. In the gloom of the night, he's a looming shadow silhouetted against the sky.  
  
“I’m going to re-bandage your shoulder, okay?” Magnus says. "It's bleeding through."  
“Do whatever you want,” Julia says, staring out at the river and the outstretched plains. In the distance, the lights of faraway cities twinkle.  
  
It’s quiet, here, so late at night. It’s always late nights with her and Magnus, Julia thinks, midnight craters and rooftops. There is a sort of narrative causality to their relationship, she thinks despairingly. This time he’s the one patching her up.  
  
He rips the bandage off carefully.  
  
"So, what happened?"  
"It's none of your business," Julia says again. "Don't worry about it. It doesn't involve you."  
"I think if you're getting stabbed, you should probably let me know about it," Magnus says, frustration leaking into his voice. "I care about you, and it's kind of fucking terrifying when you come home with a stab wound!"  
  
"Sorry," Julia says. It sounds insincere. She is sorry, though. She didn't expect him to be so concerned. She hadn't anticipated anything that happened today.  
  
“I,” Magnus pauses. “I thought we were friends. Am I wrong?”  
Julia shakes her head. “No, you’re not.”  
“Then why didn’t you tell me what’s going on?"  
  
Julia wants to say "because I didn't want you to get hurt." She wants to say "because you don't need to get wrapped up in this." She wants to say "because you are strong and handsome and still an outsider and so you would be a perfect scapegoat for a revolution and I don't want you to get killed."  
  
Instead, she says, "Why are you still here, Magnus?"  
"What?"  
Julia continues. "You could go anywhere. You're - you're strong, and you can fight, and you don't have any family here, you could just leave. Nothing's holding you back, so why don't you just get out of here?"  
  
Magnus's hands pause where they are pressing on her shoulder. He takes a deep breath through his nose like he's trying to keep himself from saying something hurtful.  
  
“Are you asking because you want me gone, or because you’re afraid of what could happen to me?” He asks neutrally. "Do you want to hear what I think?"  
  
"Whatever," Julia says, painfully aware that she sounds like a petulant twelve year old. Magnus continues.  
  
"I heard from Dave down at the general store that there was a protest today. I heard that the guards attacked the protesters and that a bunch of people were arrested, and that a lot more people were hurt. I think you were there, and that you didn't tell me about this. Am I wrong?"  
  
"No. You're not. It wasn't supposed to turn into...this. It was supposed to be peaceful, for fucksake, and then the guards just opened fire on us and well...I got off lightly, I guess." Julia gestures to her shoulder and her ankle. Magnus frowns.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me about this? I would have come with you."  
  
He sounds hurt. Julia feels a growing pit, something like shame and something like guilt at the bottom of her stomach.  
  
"I didn't think it involved you. I didn't want you to get hurt."  
“Jules,” he says. “I can’t not be involved, if you’re going to be in danger. If the town’s in danger.”  
  
"Mags," Julia says. "You don't have to get involved. I said it before. You should get out of here. It's only going to get worse from here, I think. I can't leave, but you can. Seriously. I don't want you getting hurt." The last sentence is like ripping stitches.  
  
He shakes his head. "If I was going to leave, I would have left after I made enough money for a horse. Or I would have hitched a ride on one of the caravans. I didn’t, because I don’t want to leave. This is my home too," Magnus says. "Please."  
  
She realizes that it's been more than a year and a half, since Magnus arrived. She doesn't know what Magnus is asking for.  
  
"Alright," Julia says, and leans her head on Magnus’s shoulder. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! hope u enjoyed, let me know what you thought - i'm not crazy about some of the writing decisions i made here and am probs gonna go over and edit after i'm done with the fic, lol.


	6. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so its not a slow burn(sides) after all ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank yall for the comments, u guys are a gift and i appreciate every word <3

He carries her back into the house. They don’t speak after the culmination of the confrontation on the roof. Magnus is mulling over what Julia told him. The protests are simple. He will help in whatever way he can, because this is his home and these are his people. He won’t let Julia get hurt like that again (and it shocked him, how upset he was to see her hurt). Julia is more complicated. Julia is always more complicated. Julia cared about him and therefore lied by omission. Julia cared about him enough to lie to him. Julia leaned on his shoulder and Magnus wishes that he had turned his head to kiss her.   
  
Without asking, Magnus walks past his bedroom and carries her up the stairs to hers. The house is dark, but he’s familiar with the path through and upward. It’s been so long, he thinks, since he arrived. Julia strokes his arm with her hand and he nearly drops her.   
  
He sets her down outside her door. He never goes into her room.   
  
“Thanks,” she says, quietly. She is still touching his arm, her hand now encircling his wrist. They are standing very close together, near enough that even in the darkness, Magnus can see the flecks of gold in her irises. He feels like she is trying to tell him something in a language that he does not understand.   
  
Every person has a limited number of perfect moments in their life. For Magnus, this is one of his: Julia Waxmen, bruised and bloodied, looking at him like he is the answer to a question that she has not asked. He feels a compulsion, as if this night and their heartfelt conversation is the culmination of the last year and a half, as if there is a window now that will be shut forever if not leapt through. Inevitability, he suddenly feels, is constrained by time.   
  
“Jules,” he hesitates. “Can I?”   
  
She rolls her eyes, as if she isn’t the one who has spent two months avoiding him in a half-hearted attempt to pretend she doesn’t care. Julia tilts her head upward and presses her lips against Magnus’s.   
  
She tastes a little bit like blood but mostly like life. He raises a hand to caress the side of her face and another around her waist to pull her in closer so that he can feel her warmth against his body. She runs a hand around his neck and another around his shoulder, leaning her weight against his so that he stumbles back into a wall. She laughs, a full-bodied vibration in her chest, and they break the kiss. Her face is so close to his. Julia pulls away, and he feels an animal disappointment that she is no longer pressed against him.   
  
“I know my timing is awful but,” Julia pauses. “Do you want to get dinner with me sometime?”   
“Yeah,” Magnus says, heart full to bursting. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> right! depending on the next couple of days of my life play out, we might be looking at a week hiatus next week - i have the end of the fic written out but there's a couple of chapters in the middle giving me trouble plotwise, and im working like 2 jobs rn so yanno thats where im at time-wise. feel free to bug me on tumblr about this, though! happy to give updates. 
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	7. MOST LIVES ARE A BUNDLE OF GOOD AND BAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> planning, and looping magnus into those plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...lots of oc talk. also! double update today bc I'm probs gonna be late next week too. promise we're getting into the meat of this very soon. 
> 
> thanks for reading!

Nothing really changes between the two of them. They were domestic before, dating just puts a label on the relationship. Magnus still buys her paperbacks. Julia still comes with Magnus on his errands sometimes. They eat breakfast together, only now they’re playing footsie under the table when they think Steven won’t notice.

It is, as Julia suspected, ridiculously easy to love Magnus.

Julia doesn’t care to tell her dad, but Magnus insists because “It’s the right thing to do, Jules, and also, it’d be really awkward for us if he found out without us telling him, like, he would give us shit forever.”

Which leads to the most terrible dinner conversation Julia’s had since she was twelve and her father was trying to explain puberty. Steven clearly enjoys making the two of them uncomfortable. He spends twenty minutes explaining safe sex. They try to shout him down. He just talks louder, until they’re all yelling, and then he cracks up and tells them to be smart about things. It’s been three days since they started dating.

Julia had always thought of a relationship with Magnus as an inevitability to be avoided, something that would be easy and straightforward if she just yielded to what the world and her heart pushed at her at every turn. It’s not, though. Relationships are hard. Relationships mean accepting the fact that Magnus means something more to her than just the man sleeping in the repurposed storeroom, more than just a friend. It means caring.

Maybe she should stop thinking about her life in narrative, Julia thinks.

There’s the rest of her life to be thinking about, anyway. The gash on her shoulder scabs over. She stops limping a couple of days after the protest. Her father pulls her aside and tells her, “I don’t want to know what’s happening because if Kalen investigates, he’s going to investigate me, but I hope you know what you’re doing.” She nods, and he hugs her and tells her to take a few days off, say that she had an accident with an order of lumber falling on her.

Julia hasn’t talked to her friends yet. She hasn’t been avoiding them, but she also hasn’t checked up on anybody. She probably should. That would be the good friend thing to do. But. Well. Maybe the thing with Magnus is a distraction, so she doesn’t need to think about the town’s slow descent into a dictatorship.

That’s a lie, though. It’s all that her and Magnus talk about.

They rehash the argument over dinners, at night, while doing chores, whenever they’re in the house and there’s no one there to hear them. Magnus is adamant about knowing everything that she’s thinking about.

“I’m not sure what to do now,” Julia says. “It’s too dangerous to ask people to protest again, you know?”   
“We can’t leave things like this,” Magnus responds.   
“I’m just worried that the only choice is escalating things,” Julia confesses. “I don’t know if we’ve passed the tipping point for letting things go.”   
“You’re talking about revolution,” Magnus says quietly. Nobody’s listening to them, but it feels like something to be quiet about. All the shadows seem a menace, even in the cozy kitchen, even as Julia scrubs plates next to Magnus.   
  
“Yeah,” Julia says. “But maybe that’d be taking things too far. Like yeah, taxes are bad, but we can live with them, or petition through the court.”   
“Jules. They fucking shot at you.”   
“I’m just worried about making things worse,” Julia says. There were so many soldiers.   
“I don’t think that they’re going to get better if you don’t do anything, though,” Magnus says.   
“Yeah,” Julia says, thinking about her father and all her friends. She thinks about how just a few weeks ago, she was still thinking about leaving. She wonders what would have happened if she had just kept walking, the night she found Magnus.   
“Hey, you’ve got me. Things are going to be fine.” Magnus leans over to kiss Julia on her forehead. “I promise.”

_________

Lillian goes missing the Thursday after the protest.

Julia doesn’t find out about it until Van comes by on a sunny Saturday morning. She’s surprised to see him. She almost never sees him during the daytime. In the sunlight, outside the bar, he looks tired, his dark hair pulled into a low ponytail, his face bare of his usual makeup. He’s got a bandage peeking out of the corner of his collar. He smiles at her, but his face is tense.

“Hi,” Julia says.   
“You seen Lillian?” he asks, foregoing pleasantries.   
“No, why?”   
“She hasn’t been around for the last week. Her sister has started putting up missing persons signs.”

Julia frowns. “Seriously?” To her knowledge, other than living together, Lillian and her sister are not close. And Lillian is twenty-four, not a child.

Van sighs. “I know, it sounds like an overreaction. But fuck, I’m really worried,” he says. “I hadn’t seen her for a few days after all the, well, you know, and usually that’s no big deal, except her sister came to visit me and asked if Lils had been by, because she hadn’t come home for a couple nights, and she’s an adult and shit but it’s weird, you know? And so I said I’d keep an eye out for her, and I haven’t been able to find her anywhere, and I’ve been running around town all morning.” Van takes a deep breath. “Are you sure you haven’t seen her?”

“We haven’t,” Magnus says, from where he’s silently peeked out the front door behind Julia. She jumps. “Oh, sorry Jules.”   
“Jeez, don’t jump out at me like that!”   
“Sorry, sorry,” Magnus apologizes. “But yeah, haven’t seen her. You think this is related to,” he lowers his voice, “the protest?”

Van turns back to Julia. “You finally looped Magnus in? We coulda used him if you told him sooner.” It comes out accusatory.   
“Hey,” Magnus says. “Jules had her reasons.” Julia shakes her head.   
“Not good ones,” she says, and the look that her and Magnus share is one that promises a longer conversation later, one without a third party observing. She turns back to Van. “No need to be shitty about it.”   
Van grimaces apologetically and rubs his temple. “Sorry, I’ve just been on edge since everything. Keep thinking about how shit could have gone better. Gods. That was a disaster.” Magnus claps a hand on Van’s shoulder.   
“We’ll keep an eye out for her,” Magnus says. “I’ll ask around when I’m running deliveries, today.”   
“That’d be great. Thanks man.” Van nods at him, then at Julia. “See you guys later. I’m going to ask ‘Lex if she’s has seen her.”

He turns, and walks away. Julia and Magnus stand in the doorway, watching the half-elf step down the street, hands jammed in his pockets. It’s a nice day out. Couriers run down the street carrying boxes, smoke cheerfully unfurls up chimneys, the sun shines.

“You think she’s really missing?” Magnus says.   
Julia exhales heavily. “I hope not.”

_________

Lillian doesn’t turn up that day, or the next, or the next.

Instead, when Julia goes to buy bread, the shopkeeper tells her that “haven’t you heard? Ignatius Underhill has gone missing — probably a publicity stunt,” when she asks him why there are no newspapers for sale. She overhears two housewives talking about the awful business of one of their friend’s husband’s running away, probably, heavens know he hasn’t come home in a week. When Julia walks down the street in Central to meet Alex for lunch, she sees the sides of stores papered with missing-persons signs. Most are unofficial. Some have been verified. Some of them are for Lillian.   
________

Kalen issues a statement after the third official disappearance. He declares that security measures have to be taken. It is a travesty that the rioters and terrorists in town have been able to abduct so many people. One citizen is too many, the statement says. We must protect our own.

A mandatory curfew. A freeze on the buying-and-selling of weapons, and a confiscation of existing ones. A census. All of this, on top of the already existing regulations.

“He’s mad,” Alex says, “you can’t control a whole city like this.” She’s still working in the governor’s office, though Helga left the guards a week after the protest.

It’s the second time they’ve seen each other all together since the protest, this time at the quiet jazz club in the Seamstress’s district that Charmie works at on alternate Saturdays. The last time was when they flyered Central with posters of Lillian and quietly reassured each other that they were all okay, swapping the bits of information that they knew. No permanent damage, no major arrests amongst the protesters, the whole event might have been a fiasco but not one that destroyed anyone’s life. This time, they’re gathered at Charmie’s club to talk about what to do next. Magnus is with them this time, frowning into his cup.

“I’ll bet you anything he’s trying to make it so that all trade goes through him and his fucking puppet government,” Aramil says.

They don’t need to talk about how disastrous that would be for the town. Raven’s Roost lives and dies on trade. Van kicks the table leg. Drinks and the ashtray jump.

“This is bullshit. Let’s not beat around the fucking bush. It’s Kalen who’s abducting people. Who else would it be? Lillian, Seb, Ignatius — they’re all people who were at protest. Lillian’s the only person on the council who said anything against Kalen. Ignatius has been writing news columns protesting the tax raises for the last six months. And this is just the people we know are missing! Better keep your head down, ‘Lex, because you’re gonna be fucking next if you say anything at your cushy assistant job,” Van says, shoulders tense, hands gripping his cup so tightly that Julia worries he’s going to break it. Him and Lillian are childhood friends, she remembers. Aramil rubs Van’s leg. Alex leans forward.

“You think I like working there?” Alex says sharply. “You think I want to watch Kalen while he _fucking_ monologues about how he’s a credit to the town and how he godsdamn fucking deserves everything that he’s taking, that he’s doing it for us? You think I like hearing that, and smiling, and saying of _course_ I agree with him,’ yes Governor the sun shines out of your ass?’ But if I’m not working there, then some other poor sap is, and then we’re going to have even less information about his fucking megalomaniacal plans than we already have!”

It’s the most profanity Julia’s heard from Alex in living memory. She stares at Alex, who looks to be on the verge of tearing up and smearing her perfect makeup. Van looks briefly ashamed.

“It’s not like we’re even doing anything with the information,” Julia says. Alex leans back.   
"We should be. We should have done it earlier, Jules. God. I work there. I should have noticed what was happening before it got this bad,” Alex says, eyes red-rimmed and downcast.   
Julia shakes her head. “You couldn’t have known.”   
“I work there, of course I should have known!”

“Hey,” Magnus says. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. I think we can all agree that now what we need to do is find the missing people.” He looks like he’s ready to stand up and march out into the street. Julia levers her legs over his lap to keep him seated. Just in case.   
“And then we overthrow the government,” Helga adds.   
“No more protests, though.”   
“No. No more protests. This time we have to be careful. And first we need to find Lils and everyone else who got disappeared. Then we fight fire with fire,” Julia says.

General nods of agreement around the table.

“We’re doing this?” Aramil says quietly. “Revolution?”   
“Well, we have to, don’t we?” Magnus says, matter-of-factly, as if it isn’t a choice. For him, it isn’t, Julia thinks despairingly. Of course.

“If they have Lillian, they might be able to figure out who else is involved. And we can’t count on nobody else getting caught. We have to do it smart this time,” Charmie cuts in.   
“And we need to re-arm ourselves,” Helga says. “We can’t stand up to his forces without being armed. Even if we don’t use them.”

Van frowns.

“Nothing’s allowed into the city without going through a security checkpoint now — Kalen started confiscating weapons from travelers,”   
Alex nods. “He’s already started confiscating them from citizens — I heard that soldiers have been sniffing around the Redcliff neighborhoods.”  
“I’m the next owner of the Hammer and Tongs.” Julia says. “I can make us any weapons we need.”

She says it without thinking. It’s true, though. She’s been the one running the forge for years, and it won’t look suspicious if they start buying a few more ingots here and there. But it means commitment to the cause.

Aramil shakes his head. “There’s no point, though. We still can’t distribute them. And if you —”   
“I run deliveries on Thursdays and Fridays,” Magnus cuts in. “I have an excuse to be taking things places, as long as we disguise the weapons.” Julia nods, even though she suddenly worries about Magnus being stopped in the street and frisked.

“We can figure this out later,” Charmie says, looking looking at her watch nervously. “I’ve got to get on stage in a bit, and there’s gonna be more people here soon. Keep it cool. No more shop-talk.”

She’s right. Any one of the strangers trickling in could be one of Kalen’s guards, off-duty. Or one of the many bureaucrats that work in his offices. The lights are dimming, and who knows who is hiding in the shadows.

“And nobody’s going home alone, tonight. If he’s grabbing people off the streets…” Alex trails off. Charmie nods. “Buddy system.”

________________

Here is something Julia does not tell anyone: she doesn’t want to do any of this. She doesn’t want to help plan a revolution. She doesn’t want her friends to get hurt. She’s been in fights before, sure, but the day of the protest was something else. She doesn’t want to experience that again. She knows she doesn’t deserve to say that: nothing that bad has happened to her, she’s not one of the people who were disappeared. Her friend is missing, and all she can think about are her own misgivings.

She wonders if this makes her a bad person.

When she gets home from the meeting at the club, Julia takes off her boots and stands on her bed. Reaching up, she rips the postcard of some faraway beach off of her ceiling. 


	8. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is very very sappy. in which magnus has feelings

A lot of people talk to Magnus about Julia. Specifically, they ask what his intentions are toward her. More specifically, they warn him that if he breaks her heart, then he’s in for a world of trouble. Magnus always laughs and tells them that that “you’d have to get in line behind her!” They laugh too. Neither of them are joking. 

Julia doesn’t know about any of this. Magnus doesn’t tell her. It’s not Julia’s problem, she’d only be pissed that so many people think she doesn’t know what she wants. He gets it. But Magnus thinks it’s kind of nice that they all care about whether Julia’s happy. He wants her to be happy, too. 

He isn’t sure whether she is. He knows she’s put the rest of her life plans on hold because of the revolution. She spends most nights working on revolution stuff with him, figuring out how they’re going to transport weapons and supplies. She’s stopped spending so much time sitting on the roof, staring at the road. She hasn’t talked to him about it. There’s a lot of conversations they should probably be having, he thinks. He doesn’t want to bring them up. 

She smiles at him. She kisses him and lets his hands wander, sometimes directing him where to touch. She slaps his butt when she passes him in the hallway. It’s giving him whiplash, the way her attitude, her body language toward him has changed. 

Sometimes he wonders whether he’s a consolation prize. That Julia only deigns to date him because she’s stuck here, that given the opportunity she’d leave him in an instant. But that’s late-night thoughts. Halfway down the bottle thoughts. During the day, Magnus holds Julia’s hand as they walk down the street. 

He thought relationships would be easier. He doesn’t remember having any. He wouldn’t trade this for the world.

“What is Jules, to you?” Alex asks Magnus as he hands her a grocery order with twin daggers slipped betwixt the carrots.  
“Huh?”  
She looks down at the carrots to check for the weapons. Satisfied that they’re there, she looks back at him.  
“Like, do you love her?”  
“Of course,” Magnus says without thinking. 

How could he not? 

Julia is beautiful and smart and funny and something about the way she thinks makes sense to him on a visceral level. He’s aware that he’s not articulating this very well. It’s not traits, it’s a series of moments, of impressions, of long conversations about nothing. She’s important to him in a way he can’t explain. 

Being in love is one thing. Unspooling why he loves Julia in a way that makes sense is another. And he thinks this is love, that when he’s with her it feels like slipping into a much-loved sweater. He’s memorized so much about her now, catalogued the freckles on her face and the way she takes her tea and the sound of her footsteps when she’s trying to sneak up behind him. 

Is that love? Is missing Julia when she’s not there, is that love? Is wanting Julia to leave the town maybe, to hell with Raven’s Roost I need to get you safe, is that love? 

Whatever she feels about him, he loves her, he thinks. He’s aware that’s not enough, that relationships sometimes burn quick and die faster. But then he sees her in the forge, pounding a piece of sparking metal, her hammer ringing clarion, and he thinks he could watch her forever. 

Magnus does not believe in destiny. But she found him, and she feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> also, in case you're the type of person who likes meta on fics, here's some meta on my thought process re: julia in this fic:  julia meta 1  julia meta 2 .


	9. EMBERS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more planning, a long overdue conversation, deliveries, and a proposal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this is the last time we’re gonna have OC infodump probs! thanks for stickin thru this, yall are gr8  
> also damn that last episode got me shook!!! this is no longer canon!!!! fuck!!!!!

They meet at the bar after hours. Or in Van’s apartment, or one of the clubs that Charmie plays at, huddled in the corner with cigarettes and shotglasses filled with water. Plausible deniability. They’re young and pretty and having a good time out together, pay no attention to the paper slips that get passed with the cigarettes or the occasional whispered message that gets passed from mouth to ear in the guise of a kiss. Van learns how to cast Message and then they trade silent sentences amongst themselves.  
  
This time, there are no napkins scribbled with haphazard ideas, stained with coffee. This time, it’s charts, it’s lists, they’re settling in for the long haul.  
  
Here is the problem: Governor Kalen is mad. Governor Kalen has been importing guards, no, not guards. Soldiers. Governor Kalen’s ultimate plan is to rule Raven’s Roost as what Julia colloquially calls a “dystopian dictatorship,” and has been enacting law after law. All of them enforced by the surplus of soldiers and the hostages that he does not admit to taking, the looming threat of a slit in the throats of loved ones.  
  
Peaceful protest is ineffective. A frontal assault will get them killed — they’re badly armed, and the soldiers are organized to an extent that the rebels are not. There are only six of them anyway, that they know about. And they can’t move while people they care about are being held hostage — if they’re alive at all.  
  
So their first step is information gathering and dissemination.  
  
“Who do we know that could figure out where the prisoners are being held?” Julia asks.  
“I could do some snooping,” Alex offers.  
“Only if you’re sure you won’t be caught,” Aramil says. “We don’t want to compromise your position so soon.”  
“It’s bound to be somewhere in the office,” Alex shrugs.  
  
“What do we do after we find the location?” Magnus asks.  
“I guess it depends on where it is,” Van admits. “I don’t think we can plan without knowing the location.”  
“That’s top priority, then,” Charmie says. “What do we do after we get them out? Kill Kalen?”  
“We’re not assassinating Kalen,” Alex says. “The system isn’t corrupt, only the person at the top.  
“It’d be a clean break, you gotta admit,” Magnus says. “It’d be a lot easier.”  
“Doesn’t mean better,” Van shakes his head. “We can’t make that an option  
“But there has to be some legislative reform,” Aramil says. “Everything he did was legal.”  
“First we gotta take him down, though,” Magnus says.  
  
It feels insurmountable. There are six of them, and Kalen has troops that outnumber them ten to one. Julia turns to Helga.  
  
“Can you find out who in the guards would be sympathetic? If we can turn even part of Kalen’s forces we’re going to be a lot better off,” Julia asks.  
“I can try,” Helga says. “Not sure who’s gonna talk to me, since I quit. Probably some of the local kids would be willing to turn.”  
“And we have to do carefully,” Aramil says firmly. “If one of us goes down, all of us do. Kalen’s bound to have someone who can cast Zone of Truth, and we can’t count on nobody getting caught.”  
  
Alex nods, and looks at Julia.  
  
“Is it okay if we use the Hammer and Tongs as an information hub? It makes sense since both you and Magnus live there, and Magnus is the one running deliveries,” Alex asks. “It’ll be a risk, but I think you’re the least likely to be suspected.”  
“Plus, no one is going to expect a revolution to be planned from a forge,” Helga adds. “I know there are guys staking out the newspaper offices and some of the bars in Central, but nobody’s stationed on Craftman’s.”  
“We’ll use Van’s bar and Lillian’s address as a front, then,” Magnus says. “Though we should ask Steven first. If you’re okay with it, Jules?”  
  
She nods. “Yeah. You can count on us.”  
  
___________  
  
“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”  
Julia asks her father as she walks past the workshop, peeking her head in. Magnus is out. He’s left a pile of wood shavings behind him. Steven is sitting at his workbench, sanding a handle for a knife. He looks at Julia and smiles. He’s always happy to see her, and waves her in.  
  
“Of course. What’s up, kiddo?”  
“So,” Julia pauses, brushing some wood shavings off of Magnus’s bench and sitting down. “Hypothetically, if I were to be helping run a completely hypothetical and not real revolution, would you be okay with me using the Hammer as a checkpoint for information?”  
  
The smile disappears from his face. Julia fidgets. Her dad always looks intimidating when he’s not smiling.  
  
“Are you sure this is what you want to do, Jules?”  
She stares back at him, face set. Julia is unaware that she looks just like her father like this.  
“It’s the right thing to do, Dad. And I promise, it won’t be dangerous. Nobody’s going to come looking here.”  
He shakes his head. “I don’t know anything about this, okay?”  
“What?”  
He looks back at her. “I said, I don’t know anything about this.” He enunciates each word carefully. “Hypothetically, if soldiers come around looking for a revolutionary here, they’re going to look at me, or Magnus. Not you.”  
“Well. Magnus is helping, too,” Julia admits.  
Steven sighs. “Of course he is.” He brushes sawdust off his palms and rubs his eyes. “I want you guys to be careful, and I want to have plausible deniability in case Kalen takes me in for questioning.”  
“They’d have to take me first,” Julia says. Steven smiles at her gently. “It’s always a risk, kiddo. And rather the guy who doesn’t know anything, than you or Magnus.”  
  
Julia frowns. “I don’t like it.”  
“You don’t have to. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Hypothetically, I think you're doing the right thing,” Steven says, his face gentler.  
  
“Okay,” Julia says. She looks down at the wood shapes amongst the sawdust. She picks a piece up and examines it.  
  
“What’s Magnus making?”  
“I’m not sure,” Steven admits. “He keeps telling me not to look at it. Probably an experiment.”  
  
“Huh,” Julia says. She looks back at her father.  
  
"Why'd you teach him how to carve?"  
  
Steven shrugs.  
  
"No real reason. He was bored, so I offered to show him the ropes. Then I realized the boy was pretty decent at it, and figured that he might as well have a trade to fall back on, considering he doesn't know anything else except fighting."  
"He's the only other apprentice you took, though." Jules bites her lip. "I thought I was your only apprentice."  
Steven laughs.  
"Jules, honey, I had taught you everything you needed to know by the time you were sixteen." Steven shrugs. "And, well, you wanted to go see the world, and I figured I could use some help in the shop while you were gone."  
"You knew?"  
"You're not the first nineteen year old who snuck out in the middle of the night, kiddo."  
"Do we have to talk about this?" Julia looks down at the lump of wood in her hands, ashamed. Leaving Raven’s Roost feels like a plan from another life.  
“Well, you were the one who brought it up.” Steven scrapes away determinedly at the handle he’s sanding.  
“I thought you’d be mad if I said I wanted to leave,” Julia says in a rush. “It just seemed easier to leave without saying anything. ‘Cause there’s the forge and everything, and you always talk about how the shop’s been in the family for generations and, I dunno.”  
  
Steven doesn’t say anything for a long moment, steadily working at the piece of wood in his hands. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you couldn’t talk with me about this stuff,” he says. “I just wanted you to feel like you had, oh, I don’t know, a legacy. You should do what makes you happy, Jules.”  
  
"I'm sorry,” Julia says. “I am happy here. I didn’t want to leave like, forever.” He smiles at her.  
  
"Well, I suppose, at least you found Magnus."  
"Yeah, imagine what could have happened to him without me."  
  
They both laugh.  
  
"And if you want to leave Raven's Roost, you let me know first, okay?"  
"Okay,” Julia pauses. "It's not like I can leave now, what with," She gestures vaguely, trying to encompass all of the revolutionary planning in one gesture. “And I should actually go tell them we’re good to go, so I’m just going to,” she gestures like she’s going to leave. Steven nods.  
  
"I'm proud of you, Jules."  
“Thanks, dad,” Julia says, and leaves the workshop feeling lighter than when she walked in.  
  
__________  
  
  
The thing between her and Magnus grows in the cracks of their lives.  
  
No one expects a revolution to be slow. But days turn to weeks turn to months, and Julia hammers swords and battleaxes between orders for kitchen knives and cast-iron skillets, and Magnus carves crossbows between chairs and tables. He delivers weapons between deliveries of groceries, dry goods, books. Julia smiles at the soldiers who come to the Hammer and Tongs for sword maintenance, to put in an order for more arrowheads, to get a new spear. The soldiers smile back. She's just the blacksmith's daughter. None of them see her working in the forge.  
  
Julia talks to customers, and to acquaintances, and to strangers. She insinuates her discontent with the Governor. If they seem receptive, she presses further, and later Magnus will slip them paper under their door or in their order with addresses and a code word that lead to Van’s bar, where him and Aramil vet everyone who says a particular passphrase. Her friends are doing this as well. If they pass scrutiny, then they’re part of the revolutionary army, the slowly growing network of people who pass information back and forth about Kalen’s plans, his habits, where he might be keeping prisoners. Nobody has any concrete information yet. They don’t know how many people are listening to them, but their numbers are growing.  
  
Every week, Julia makes more weapons, and every Saturday Magnus runs across town delivering them, just as fast as Kalen can confiscate them. The revolution is, for now, a silent one.  
  
Day by day, more weapons are confiscated. The guards on the streets walk around with puffed up chests and gleaming spears. Kalen gives bombastic speeches and nails edicts to the walls. He says that they are close to finding the terrorists. Meanwhile, people continue to disappear. Taxes grow higher. Everyone gets used to checkpoints, and Julia wants to scream because they should not be used to this. If she was in one of her adventure novels, she’d say that the air reeks of oppression, but since it is real life it just smells like smoke and growth.  
  
In between clandestine meetings and surreptitious notes passed from hand to hand in the street, there are long hours where the rest of their lives just…continue. Revolution does not mean that you can stop getting up in the morning and doing the laundry.  
  
Julia does the laundry. And sometimes the washing up. And goes on dates with Magnus where they still do not talk about what they want out of the future.  
  
Magnus is direct. Now that they’re a couple, he says things like “I’ve been half in love with you since I got here, which is dumb, because I didn’t know that much about you,” and “You make me really happy,” with the same nonchalance that he uses to ask “pass the salt.” He tells her that he loves her. Who does things like that, Julia thinks. Magnus, apparently.  
  
Julia never knows how to respond to any of it. She tells him things like “I saw this at the store and thought of you,” and “Come out with me tonight,” and “Stand here a moment? I need to measure you for a sword. Of course its for you.”  
  
Against all odds, he seems to know what she means.  
__________  
  
After dinner one night, Magnus asks her to come out to the roof of the forge with him.  
  
“There’s something I want to show you,” he says. “Meet me out there in an hour?”  
“Okay,” Julia says, smiling. She’s curious as to what his surprise is. Magnus likes surprising people. This isn’t the first time he’s told her to meet him somewhere so he can show her something, or give her some trinket.  
“Cool,” he beams back.  
  
It’s getting dark by the time Julia goes outside. She brings a lamp with her, and balances it carefully as she climbs up. Magnus’s legs dangle over the edge of the roof.  
  
“So what did you want to show me?” she asks, climbing awkwardly onto the roof. Magnus is lying down, but sits up when he hears her. He grins.  
“Just wait. It’s supposed to start soon. Turn off the lamp, we won’t be able to see it as good.”  
Julia clicks the lamp off and sits down next to him. He puts an arm around her shoulder, and lies back down, pulling her down with him. The sky is a velvet blue, growing toward black. Stars are beginning to wink into existence. It’s very comfortable, lying next to Magnus. He’s very warm.  
  
A single white streak across the sky. Then a second. A third. And as if a dam has been broken, the sky is suddenly filled with streaks of white crowding the sky, angling down and disappearing into the horizon.  
  
“A meteor shower!” Julia sits up, delighted. Magnus gets up too.  
“Yup, Van told me about it. S’pposed to be good for magic. Thought you would like it.” He sounds pleased.  
“It’s beautiful.”  
  
Julia stares up at the stars.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” Magnus says, teasing, wondering. Julia laughs.  
  
“Thanks, Mags. And thanks for showing this to me. It’s awesome.”  
  
Meteors continue to fall. She hears Magnus rustle with something and take a deep breath. “Uh. Jules?”  
“Hm?” Julia turns to him. In the dark, she can’t clearly see his facial expression. He’s looking at her with clear eyes and a determined set of the jaw.  
  
“So, this is kind of cliche but,” he pulls a small box out of his pocket, and opens it. Julia is frozen. “Will you marry me?” He looks up at her wide eyed. He’s holding a lacquered box that opens like flower petals, inside which is nestled a small and gleaming ring. It’s lovely. Julia looks down at him.  
  
“We’ve been dating for eight months, Mags,” she hears herself saying this distantly.  
He shrugs, smiles a crooked smile. “So? I don’t think love is about time. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Jules.” He means every word, Julia thinks. Julia turned twenty-two a month ago.  
“Why are you asking me now?” The words fall out of her mouth like stones. Magnus looks away from her, finally.  
“I don’t know. I guess with everything that’s happened and the past months and the revolution stuff and people getting taken, and then like, way back when we started dating that first night you came home all bloody, and that was terrifying, and I guess I just feel like, like anything could happen, you know? Like. We don’t have guaranteed time. And I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t want to have any regrets.”  
  
Julia does not respond. She reaches forward and closes the box gently. He looks back up at her, face falling.  
  
“Jules?”  
“I. Magnus. I can’t,” she says. She stands up. “I’m, I’m going inside. We can talk about this in the morning, okay?” She means it to be reassuring. It’s probably not. Her voice is trembling. She doesn’t know why.  
  
“Why?” he asks, voice steady, confused, longing. He stares up at her, eyes like an accusation.  
“I.” And Julia stops. Marrying Magnus means stability. Permanence. She’s twenty-two. They’ve been dating for eight months. She loves him, but every time she looks at the future, the years and years of the same thing after the same thing that will follow, she wants to scream. How can she explain. His jaw clenches.  
  
“Am I just a consolation prize, since you’re stuck here? I don’t understand, Jules. I thought we were in it for the long game.”  
“Of course you’re not!,” Julia exclaims. “Magnus, please. I love you. Can we just, can we just talk about this tomorrow?”  
  
He hesitates. He looks like he’s going to say something, but he slumps down instead. Lowers his hands, clenches the box in his fist.  
  
“Fine. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says tonelessly, followed up with an “I love you.”  
“I love you too,” Julia says, and scrambles away.  
  
She leaves him sitting on the roof. The meteors are still fallings, a kaleidoscopic backdrop to where he sits, the box with the engagement ring cupped in the palm of his hand.  
  
Climbing down, Julia realizes that she should have said something about how she loved him, and that her hesitance didn’t have anything to do with her feelings toward him. It’s too late, though. The moment’s gone.  
  
He asked her to _marry_ him.  
___________  
  
The next morning, they don’t talk about it. Magnus leaves to deliver some groceries before Julia wakes up.

He doesn’t come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. if you didn’t think that mango was gonna get kidnapped when i introduced the people getting ghosted plot point then u are a fool and/or i did my job right. 
> 
> julia and steven have a pretty good relationship! tbh a recurring point in julia’s life is that she thinks she’s hiding things better than she actually is. steven, mags, and her friends all kind of know her better than she knows herself in some respects. 
> 
> magnus rushes in, indeed. jules and maggie’s relationship is more complicated, lol. not bad complicated! just neither of them are good at communicating with each other because communicating is HARD you guys. ….also i definitely did not project onto jules my own tendency to blank out when presented with emotion things NOPE. 
> 
> coupla housekeeping things: gonna be retroactively fixing timelines + ages in the beginning of the fic over the next week or so. if you see discrepancies here or going forward, rest assured i will go back and edit. 
> 
> and uh this fic is uh. not canon anymore, and i’m debating on whether to edit the beginning or not - let me know your thoughts on whether i should do that or not if you’ve got any :) 
> 
> wow. long note this week. thanks for reading!!!


	10. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> magnus is confused

Magnus wakes up early, blinking. Light slants through the windows onto his face; he had forgotten to close the curtain last night. It's very warm and very bright in his room. He rubs his eyes. His conscious self coalesces. Julia said no last night. The ring box is sitting on his nightstand. She said they'd talk about it this morning.

When he checks the clock its before Julia's usually awake. He puts the clock down and lies facedown on his bed, eyes closed. He wishes Julia was lying next to him. He cries a little bit into the pillow. Nobody's around to see him, not that it matters. He's sad! He's really sad.

Why doesn't Julia want to marry him? The question rests like a stone in his throat. The clock ticks on his nightstand.

Maybe he'll go wait in the kitchen. Make sure that Julia can't avoid him, because it'd be just like Julia to tiptoe around him for a couple of days and never bring up the subject again, and then he'd never understand why she said no. He doesn't want this conversation, but he wants an explanation. He thought things were going well? He thought she loved him. Does she love him? Why didn't she say yes?

Magnus gets up. Joints pop as he stretches. Pulling on a t-shirt, he walks over to the kitchen.

He thought he would be the only one awake, but Steven is sitting at the table, reading the newspaper and eating a bowl of oatmeal. He glances up at Magnus idly as Magnus maneuvers around him to pour a glass of water from the tap.

"Why're you up so early, kid?" he asks.   
"I proposed to Julia last night," Magnus blurts out. Steven perks up.   
"Yeah?"   
"She said no," Magnus says. It feels more real when he says it out loud. "She said no. I don't know why."   
"Well," Steven pauses, deflating a little. "Huh."   
"Yeah," Magnus says, and if a little bit of bitterness slips out, well, blame it on the hour. He drinks his glass of water so that he doesn't start bad-mouthing her. He loves Julia. He's very frustrated.

"Jules was always headstrong," Steven says, like that's any sort of explanation. Magnus runs a hand through his hair.   
"She said we could talk about it this morning. But she's not awake yet."   
"Jules loves you, Mags," Steven says solidly. "She wouldn't have kept you around for so long if she didn't. It's probably a misunderstanding"   
"Thanks," Magnus says. But it's not Steven's approval he needs. He puts down his glass.

It's still too early for Julia to be awake. Maybe he'll go on a delivery run, to get his mind off things. That's a good idea.

"Gonna go make some dropoffs," he says. Steven nods, picking up the newspaper again. "Can you let Julia know that I'll be back, if she's up early?"

"Sure. Be careful," Steven says, just like every time he goes out. Magnus suspects that Steven knows exactly what he's doing.   
"It's just groceries," he says, and runs out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! poor mango.


	11. MISSING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus is probably fine, Julia thinks. He's probably just late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohohoho

Julia wakes up. The sky is grey outside; it’s cloudy. She doesn’t know what time it is. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she thinks about what she’s going to say to Magnus. He’s probably downstairs waiting for her. He gets up earlier than she does. It’s annoying when they’re sharing the same bed because he always shifts around and wakes her up too. She wishes she could have gone downstairs and slept in his room with him. Are they fighting? Julia isn’t sure.

Kicking the blankets from her legs, she gets out of bed. Everything is tinted dark. She has to explain herself, Julia thinks. It’s not that she doesn’t want to marry Magnus, it’s that she doesn’t think she wants to marry anybody right now. Marriage seems like something that happens to other people, older people. Sure, Van and Aramil have been engaged since they finished school, but they’re an anomaly. If Magnus asks her again later, when they’re both older and maybe not in the middle of trying to overthrow a government, of course she’s going to say yes. She thinks. Probably. That’s a problem for future Julia.

She should explain that she likes how they are right now, the uncomplicated rhythm of their relationship, how it can exist outside of expectations and their daily lives. She should explain that her problems with marriage are not problems with Magnus, that they exist independent of each other.

Julia walks down the stairs and through the first floor of her house. Hallway, living room, kitchen. Empty, empty, empty. There are signs of life, a warm but empty coffee cup, a newspaper haphazardly folded on a counter. Julia takes a quick peek into Magnus’s room that turns into a longer detour. She sits on the bed. It’s cold, the sheets and blankets haphazardly mussed, Magnus’s pajamas on the floor where he undressed. The room smells like him. Julia wonders whether she should have said yes.

She gets up and leaves the bedroom. She walks over to the workshop. Her dad is clamping a beam of wood across two trestles. Julia hands him a second clamp, and he nods at her.

“Have you seen Magnus?” Julia asks.  
“He’s not back yet?”  
“No.”  
Steven frowns. “Huh. He was out making some deliveries; said he’d be back soon. Probably just got delayed.”  
“Oh,” Julia says. “We were supposed to talk about some stuff.”  
“He proposed last night, he told me?”  
“Uh. Yeah.”  
“Mm,” Steven says, and Julia leaves before he can say anything else.

She goes back to the kitchen, and checking that nobody is around, that there is no one peeking through the window (why would they be, this is a home, this is one of the most respected workshops in the city), she opens the sink cabinet and pops out a neatly hidden panel, behind which is a small pile of swords and spears and crossbows and daggers. Not to mention a little slip of paper listing how many weapons are there. The 8 DAGGERS has been crossed out, replaced with 6 DAGGERS, and the 4 CROSSBOWS now reads 2 CROSSBOWS. It’s in Magnus’s handwriting. So he’s on a delivery, after all. He’s done this many times, Julia thinks to herself, and he’s never gotten caught.

He’ll be fine.

___________

The day passes languidly, sun climbing higher in the sky and burning off the morning mist. Julia eats breakfast and gets to work on the day’s orders. She spends a few hours talking to customers, smiling and coaxing them into buying the more expensive metals. It’s for their own benefit — the pricier ones are also stronger. She’s harder to say no to than her dad.

Bargaining keeps her mind off of Magnus’s absence. She wonders why he isn’t back. It isn’t like him, to avoid a conversation like this. That’s something she would do, admittedly, but Magnus? Never.

She’s not worried. Not at all. He probably just got roped into a job on the other side of town, or ended up doing a favor for someone. It’s happened before. But it’s not like him, to avoid her. Is he avoiding her?

What if he’s captured, she doesn’t think. That’s paranoia. There’s no reason for him to be suspected of anything. They’ve been careful. What was he carrying, anyway? She doesn’t know. He left before she woke up. Julia wishes he had stayed home.

Nearly flattening her thumb with her hammer, she’s abruptly brought out of her daydreaming. She swears. She can’t afford to be distracted.

The sun climbs higher and begins to descend. The streets clear of the daily bustle, the smoke from forges dissipating as fires are banked. Julia wipes down the forge and hangs up her apron, untying her hair. Julia’s dad comes to check on her, and asks if Magnus is back. Julia shakes her head. Steven frowns, and says “Maybe you ought to go looking for him. It’s getting late.”

Julia’s. Not worried. Not too worried. A little bit worried.

“Okay,” Julia says.  
“Just make sure you get back before curfew.”  
“I got it, Dad.”

___________

It’s still light out, when Julia goes on her boyfriend-hunt. She isn’t sure where to start. Magnus could be anywhere, though he’s definitely not downspire, Julia thinks. Most of his jobs are in Central, or in Craftsman’s. Sometimes he swings over to Overridge, or one of the other spires too. Raven’s Roost is pretty big when you’re looking for one man, Julia realizes.

She checks her watch. It’s nearly seven. Where would Magnus usually be?

Home. Or out with her, maybe. With their friends. Making dinner in the kitchen as she chops vegetables and slices meat. At a tavern, but it’s a weekday. At a friend’s place? Buying something from the general store. Taking a last-minute babysitting job because one of the kids he coaches at little league’s parents need a date night desperately? That’s happened before.

Julia decides that she’ll search her neighborhood and start fanning outward from there.

She ignores the workshops next to her, the ones where her friends and acquaintances work at, except to give them a passing wave while they wipe down their tables, clear away tools. They wave back as they sweep up. Julia already asked them earlier, whether they had seen Magnus. Kat had, he had run past him early in the morning. Seemed to be in a hurry. But Julia knew that already.

Jogging, because though the sun has not set, she only has a few hours before curfew, Julia swings out of her neighborhood on the edge of the spire and across the center, to where a few taverns and bars are. The Hammer and Tongs is on the absolute edge of Craftman’s Corridor, near to the downspire ramp, good for transport and trade but bad if you’re trying to get anywhere.

It’s quiet. Craftman’s is mostly ‘shops and forges and families, and the ‘shops close early and the families sit snug and cozy in their houses. Nothing like the students in Seamstress’s, where the rent is cheap, or Central’s bars that stay open late. Craftman’s is comfortable, a good trade neighborhood - even though the past few years have lent it a shabbiness it originally did not have. Not that many places Magnus could be, really.

Julia stops at the general store, where Mr. Lorry confirms that Magnus had picked up some packages this morning, and that he had seemed a bit down. When she asks him for a list of places he’s making deliveries to, he hands her an itemized list. “Not supposed to show this to you, I suppose, but I doubt Magnus would mind that you’re looking for him.” She scans it. Most of the places on the list aren’t anywhere Magnus would have been held up at. Might still be worth a shot, though, and she adds them to her mental map of places she’s going to check.

Where else in Craftman’s? Van’s bar, the grocery store, maybe Tirva Nuen’s house because that’s one of the deliveries he made. Julia thanks Mr. Lorry and walks out of the store, the door swinging shut behind her.

__________

The sky is slowly darkening by the time that Julia walks up to Van’s bar. She’s checked the grocer’s and Tirva’s house, and neither of them had seen Magnus after he had stopped by, and he hadn’t given them any indication of where he was going. “He was just running some deliveries, right?” the grocer says. “I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Tirva promises. “I’m sure he’s fine.” Julia asks other people as she walks, cafe waitresses and shopkeepers and acquaintances, “Have you seen Magnus?” or “Have you seen a beefy guy with sideburns today, by any chance?” and some of them say, “yes, I saw a man like that this morning, going toward Central,” or “No, sorry Julia,” but nobody has seen him any later than eleven in the morning.

Each answer raises another hair on Julia’s spine. They’re all conciliatory. They all say that Magnus is okay, of course, but it’s just a thing to say, Julia thinks. Because he’s got to be fine, there’s no reason for him to be gone, except when he left this morning he was carrying two daggers and two crossbows and he’s one of the ringleaders for the revolution and if he’s not fine, oh gods, Julia doesn’t know what she’s going to do. But he’s probably just late, he’s probably just waylaid with some task on one of the other spires, forgot to tell her, maybe he’s mad at her, they were supposed to talk this morning and _Magnus would not have missed that._

Julia opens the door. The bar is nearly empty — it’s a weekday, and too early besides. A few men and women sit at tables, nursing glasses. People are mostly here to get away from their homes, at this hour. Few gaslamps light the room, and Aramil sits hunched over at the bar with a gaslamp pilfered from a table. He glances at Julia when she comes in. She nods at him.

“Where’s Van?”  
“Out back, unpacking,” Aramil glances back at his book. “You looking for him?”  
“Sort of,” Julia says. “Have you seen Magnus??  
He shakes his head.  
“He’s missing,” Julia explains. “I’m worried about him.”  
Aramil turns to her, suddenly sharp. “How long?”  
“Only today,” Julia admits. Aramil relaxes, leaning against the bar.  
“Gods, you had me thinking he got captured or something.”  
“No, it can’t be that,” Julia says, and remembers another conversation she had with Aramil’s fiance, months ago, when he thought that Lillian was missing. “Just, uh, let me know if he shows up, okay? I mean, what if he’s —” and Julia cuts herself off, as if saying it would make it true.  
“We’ll keep an eye out,” Aramil promises.  
“Thanks,” Julia says, and walks to the door, intent on searching until the minute the curfew begins.

Just as she motions to turn the doorknob, the door bangs open, hitting Julia square in the face with its heavy wooden weight.

Aramil freezes and makes as if to draw his wand. Julia swears, clutches her nose. But it’s no stranger, no enemy, it’s Charmie, leaning against the doorframe, her hands on her knees as she catches her breath, her eyeglasses askew, her hat missing. She wheezes, looks at Aramil, frozen by the bar, and Julia, clutching her nose as it trickles blood.

“Kalen’s making a statement in Central Square,” Charmie says, panting. “C’mon, we gotta go, we gotta go right now.”

___________

“Right now” ends up meaning after they find some ice wrapped in a cloth and tissues for Julia’s nose, after Aramil collects Van, and Charmie drinks a glass of water in a single long swallow before ushering the rest of them out saying that they’ve gotta hurry, that this must be important, and then they’re flagging down a two-wheel pedalcart and rushing toward Central.

It is the first time in months that Kalen has publically announced anything. Julia’s heart thumps. Her nose throbs. Is he going to announce that he has murdered the prisoners? Is he going to throw off the charade of democracy that he’s been cultivating for the past few years? They throw around ideas as they travel, urgent muttering about how this might upset their plans. Or if perhaps Kalen will give them some information they can use.

Speeding across the bridge as the sun sets, Julia’s worry for Magnus seems small, her concerns about his proposal seem petty. There is so much more at stake. A city. Thousands of people’s livelihoods. What is she, in the face of that?

The four of them arrive at the fringes of a gathering crowd (pinched faces, furrowed brows, worry like a stink rising from the people), disembarking and paying the pedalcart driver in small coin. Van elbows their way through with mage hand, close enough to see Kalen’s face. The square is brightly lit by the streetlamps that ring

Kalen is standing on a balcony of the Governor’s Mansion, flanked by two soldiers. More soldiers ring the square. He’s beaming, his face pink, his grin wide and self-satisfied. He stands tall and resplendent in full-plate armor. It would be easier if he was a repulsive slob, a fat and oily mound of a man, but Kalen carries himself like a king. He leans on the balcony.

“Citizens,” he says, heavily. “I am greatly pleased to announce that we’ve captured one of the leaders of the terrorists who have been kidnapping citizens of our fair city.”

A cold sweat breaks on Julia’s brow, her throat constricts, her heart hammers in her chest and everything about today crystallizes into one sharp understanding, a spike of knowledge that coalesces immediately in her brain, she knows, she knows what’s happened to Magnus, oh god, no wonder he didn’t come back, all her worst fears have been realized and she wants to sink to her knees, she wants to punch someone, she wants to turn back time and scream at herself to say yes to Magnus because then maybe he’d be safe.

Kalen continues.

“Magnus Burnsides was arrested today for trafficking weapons. Questioning has revealed that he is one of the lead instigators of the heinous acts of abduction that have been plaguing Raven’s Roost, and we’re confident that we can use his knowledge to further identify the terrorists.”

Julia draws in a sharp inward breath. It’s like an icicle stabbing her gut, cold fear radiating from her stomach. Oh god. What if they’ve killed him. Van puts a steadying hand on Julia’s shoulder - both comfort and warning. Don’t do anything stupid. Julia bits her lip so hard she nearly tastes blood.

“If you, or your loved ones, have any association with this man, it would behoove you to inform us, for the good of your fellows.” Kalen scans the crowd. Julia holds her breath. His eyes sweep over them.

“He will be tried for his crimes, and those who have helped him will be tried for crimes of association,” Kalen says grandly, “Our city is safer yet, citizens, and we will not rest until the rest of the terrorists are rooted out, so that upright, upstanding citizens such as you and me can sleep more safely at night.

He pauses, solemnly. “No matter what it takes.”

A silence. The soldiers standing next to Kalen begin to applaud, which ripples out from the epicenter, hesitant at first, stronger as it continues. A few people cheer. There are so many soldiers. Kalen beams. The four of them stand stock-still, paralyzed by fear for a short second, before Charmie begins to clap.

“Stand still,” Charmie says through gritted teeth. “Smile.”

Julia applauds the man who kidnapped Magnus, who kidnapped Lillian, who is destroying her hometown from the inside out to use as his own personal coinpurse. Julia smiles, and swears on her life that she will ruin Governor Kalen for everything that he has done. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: anyway, the reason that kalen’s making the announcement for magnus and never did for lillian is that he doesnt know that lillian was one of the ringleaders. she got taken because of her status as a city councilwoman. 
> 
> a pedalcart is like one of those bikes that has a lil cart pulled after it like you see in NYC and other cities, except fantasy and made out of wood and using magic to enhance it. dont worry about it too much. 
> 
> anyway i am so EXCITED about the next couple of chapters!!!!!!  
> thanks for reading friends <3


	12. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> interrogation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bluh, sorry this is late & for the impromptu hiatus. in my defense i was writing like 3 other fics so you should go read those ;P

“They don’t know where you are,” the guard grins ugly. “No one is coming for you, big man.” 

“Fuck you,” Magnus says, blood dripping from his lip. 

“Sure, buddy,” the guard says, and leans back. “It’ll be easier if you just give us what we need, you know.”

“Fuck you,” Magnus says again. He tests his handcuffs for the tenth time. They stay solid. 

“Why do you even care?” the guard drums his fingers on the table, staring at Magnus like Magnus is a peculiar bug. “You’re not even from here, I’ve heard. You look...Kirlandish, maybe. Or Aethian. I’m from Aeth, myself.”

Magnus doesn’t know where either of those places are. He probes at his lip with his tongue. Salt and iron. He doesn’t speak. 

“Just tell us who paid you, buddy,” the guard says. “You can still get out of here.”

Magnus spits. Blood and saliva. The guard doesn’t flinch. 

The guard rolls his eyes theatrically. He’s playing with him, Magnus realizes. “Well, if you’re going to be like that,” the guard says, and pulls out a wand. It’s one of those pre-programmed ones that anyone can use. Sort of pricey, but Kalen could definitely afford them. The guard points it at Magnus dramatically — the sort of drama that non-spellcasters associate with magic, a flourish that most mages don’t need. 

“Zone of Truth,” the guard says. A tingling runs down Magnus’s body, centered on his mouth, which now tastes like ozone. The guard re-holsters his wand and crosses his arms. 

“What’s your name.”

“Magnus Burnsides.” Oh gods, he can’t lie. 

“Where do you live.” 

“The Hammer and Tongs.” Oh gods oh no, Julia lives there. Steven lives there. 

“Is there a revolution.” 

“...No.” It’s technically not a revolution yet. Just planning. 

“Will there be a revolution.” 

“...Yes.” Fuck. 

“What were you transporting.” 

“A letter, groceries, an order of —” List all the things, maybe he can bury the weapons in their midst. 

“What were you transporting that is illegal.” 

“Two daggers and two crossbow.”  _ Fuck.  _

“Where were you taking them.” 

“To the people who asked for them.” Be vague. Maybe he won’t probe further. 

“Are they involved in the revolution.” 

“...Yes.”  _ Double fuck.  _

“Do you know their names.” 

“No.” Thank the gods for codenames and dropoff points. 

“What do you for the revolution.” 

“...I lead it,” Magnus says, and it’s not lying, it’s the truth, he’s a leader of the revolution, along with Julia and the rest of their friends, please don’t let the man ask about anyone else. Magnus can take the heat, he leads the revolution,  _ that much is true.  _

“Really?” The guard slips up, breaks his facade, looks at Magnus uncertainly. Magnus grins. He knows it must look a sight — blood dripping, black eye. He had fought them, when they tried to bring him in. It took four men to take him down, after the first guard had looked in his bag. He had tried to run at first, didn’t need the attention of a fight, he was supposed to go home and talk with Julia. He hopes she isn’t worrying about him. He hopes he can leave her out of this. Magnus didn’t initiate anything, this time. They brought it to him. Magnus is pretty sure he broke a few bones before they cuffed him. 

“Yes.” 


	13. HOLLOW AND HURTING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> plans, prisons, and hairpins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we’re gonna be doing some…..stuff in here. God! I know I keep saying “this is the last planning chapter and then I keep writing planning chapters I would apologize but I really do not feel that bad about it. Lots of dialogue in this one, ha

 The revolutionary instigators _sans_ Magnus, _sans_ Alex, regroup at Van’s apartment. It’s reminiscent of the night after the first protest, except the atmosphere then was one of tense, wounded silence, and this time, rapid-fire apprehensive discussion. In both cases, the stink of fear permeates the room. Questions and answers fly between them with almost no regard for who asks and who answers.

“We have to get him out of there. If they ask him the right questions, we’re screwed.”

“Why did they call him the leader of the revolution?”

“Maybe they haven’t Zone of Truth’d him yet.”

“Or maybe they just asked if he was leading the revolution. Then he could just say ‘yes’ and they’d assume the rest. Maybe Kalen doesn’t know about the rest of it?”

“Gods, that’s such a Magnus thing to do.”

“We still don’t know where the prison is.”

“We have to find it.”

“Gods, does it take your boyfriend being stolen for you to care?”

“ _Is it so wrong of me, that I care about him?”_

“Okay. We’re all getting emotional, and things...things aren’t great. We all care about Magnus. Let’s put the personal stuff aside for a moment and focus on planning.”

“We’re at the exact same place we were three hours ago, technically. Until they interrogate Magnus and find out our names. Then we’re fucked. And we don’t know when that’s going to happen.”

“Well we still can’t _goddamn_ do anything until we know where people are being held. So we’re still in the same place, and Kalen’s got the upper hand. Fuck!”

“We should start searching harder for the prisons. This is serious.”

“We’ve been doing that! We’ve been combing every inch of the spires, and there’s no way he’s transporting people out of the city. He’s gotta have some sorta, some sorta secret prison somewhere.”

“Have we tried looking over the guard schedules?”

“Yeah — none of them have anything particularly weird.”

“Maybe they’re all dead,” Julia says, silencing the discussion with the singular fear that has been dancing on the tips of each of their tongues.

“Aw, Jules.”

“He would brag about that.”

“Would he?” Julia asks. “What if he’s been like, I don’t know, pumping people for information and then once he’s done with them he just offs them? What if Lillian and everyone has been dead for months? What if Magnus is dead?”

Once she starts thinking about everything that could have gone wrong, it’s hard to stop. This is the situation she’s carefully kept herself from thinking about for months. That all their efforts are in vain. That they should have stormed the castle as soon as Lillian was taken. That Magnus is _dead_ , and she can’t stop thinking about that, Magnus like the day she found him, blood and scratches and stillness, except it’s not scratches, it’s a deep wound piercing his chest, it’s a magic missile to the head, it’s an axe bisecting him straight through the waist. Julia’s stomach churns to think about it.

Magnus with glassy eyes, open, seeing nothing.

“I gotta go, “ Julia says, and bolts for the bathroom.

“Jules—“

She slams the door behind her and kneels in front of the toilet. Her throat and stomach feel like one giant cramp. Nothing comes up. She thought she was about to hurl. She’s still nauseous. Gods. What if Magnus is dead? Her mind recoils from the thought. Gods, what if Magnus is dead, or hurt, and she’s just sitting in front of the _fucking_ toilet in Van’s bathroom not even doing anything useful, she doesn’t even know where he is, she’s not even managing to have a coherent emotion, she didn’t even throw up when thought she was going to, she told Magnus she wouldn’t marry him just this morning, and she’s not crying. Who doesn’t cry when their boyfriend is taken hostage possibly killed? What’s wrong with her?

Julia wishes Magnus was here.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door.

“Jules? You okay?” It’s Aramil.

“Hi. Sorry. Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“No, but I mean. Yeah.”

“You wanna open the door?”

“No,” Julia says, but gets up and cracks it open.

“We’re gonna get him back, you know. He’s tough,” Aramil says awkwardly. He’s clearly been nominated to have the feelings talk, and also clearly incapable of talking about feelings.

“I don’t think that’s gonna help him,” Julia says.

“He’s our friend too, Jules. We’re gonna figure it out.”

“But what if he’s dead?”

“We can’t think about that, it’s no—“

A staccato knocking on the front door makes them all freeze. Aramil and Julia exchange, panicked glances. Who is it? Are they guards? In the living room, Van cautiously rises to his feet. It’s his apartment.

Van preps a magic missile and sidles up to the door, fist glowing.

“Who is it?” he calls.

“Is Julia here? I need to tell her something.” Alex’s voice, urgent, shallow from physical exertion. Van swings the door open promptly. Alex pushes past him. Her hair is damp and mussed. Half of it is falling out of her bun. She’s carrying her high heels in her hands. There’s a small rip in her skirt, like she was running and stretched it too far.

Julia runs out of the bathroom, pulling Aramil along.

“Where have you been? Magnus is missing! ”

“No, that’s not important, I —”

“Not important?!”

“Shut up! Let me talk!” They shut up. Alex takes a deep breath. “Magnus is fine, I know where Kalen’s keeping people, and guys, you’re not going to believe it. _Raven’s Roost is hollow.”_

“What?”

_____

Raven’s Roost has a history longer than living memory.

Centuries ago, an order of monks traveled to the spires that would become Raven’s Roost and thought them good. There was a clarity to be found here, they thought, between the height and the wilderness surrounding. The air was fresh, the sky romantic. This was a place where one could get some _real_ work done. But there’s not so much space on the top of a pillar. Not much room to store materials, nor finished masterpieces too precious to sell.

So, perhaps a basement. And where to bury the dead? Another basement. And the cost of raw stone is becoming prohibitous. Well, carve the stone from the spire — and maybe make another basement while we’re at it. Over the years, the monks built downward, a honeycomb network of catacombs, hollowed out of the spire underneath the main temple complex in a web of rooms and corridors.

But time erodes memory. Eventually, people forgot about the passageways. The monastary complex was abandoned, until a couple of decades ago, when Kalen proposed a unified governing body for the spires. He uncovered them by happy accident. A fortuitous sign for his reign.

____

“There’s no prison. Central itself is the prison,” Alex finishes. “He’s not keeping the prisoners in a building. He’s keeping them underground. And he has the only known entrance to the catacombs in the basement of the Governor’s Mansion.”

“How did you find out about this?”

Alex rubs her eyes, smearing her eyeliner.

“Would you believe it, he showed them to me himself.”

____

INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

Magnus doesn’t know how much time passes, between when the now-panicked guard leaves him alone in the interrogation room and when he hears the march of guards in sync, followed by heavy footsteps, followed by the click-click of heels. Enough time that Zone of Truth has worn off, so, more than an hour. He really needs to pee.

The guards enter first, with stony expressions and straight shoulders. They walk around the table and stand behind Magnus. Then Governor Kalen enters. Magnus consciously keeps himself from stiffening. This is the first time he’s seen Kalen up close. He’s handsome, unfortunately. Broad-shouldered, gimlet-eyed, a patrician nose. He has close-cropped blond hair and a smooth-shaven face. He’s wearing a subtly golden armor. Show armor. Magnus scowls at him. The cut on his mouth reopens. Blood trickles.

Magnus is so focused on the tyrant that he fails to see the face of the secretary standing behind Kalen, her head in shadow. Kalen smiles. His teeth are very white.

 “So you’re the leader of the revolution, hm?”

“You’re lookin’ at him.”

“Don’t look much of a leader to me. More like a hired thug.”

“And you don’t look much like a _tyrannical despot_ , but here we are,” Magnus says, bravado ringing in his voice. Kalen laughs, long and loud. The secretary twitches. Magnus glances up at her, and his eyes widen. It’s Alex? Oh, Alex is Kalen’s secretary, of course, how could he forget, why is she here, does she know about everything? Whose side is she on? Does she know where he is, right now?

Kalen notices Magnus’s startle. He glances between the two of them.

“Do you know our prisoner, Alexandra?”

She shakes her head crisply. Her hair doesn’t move an ince.

“No sir, only in passing. He couriers deliveries to the office, sometimes. Mostly letters. We’ve said hello.”

“Hm.”

Kalen turns back to Magnus. Magnus stares back. Whatever he does, he can’t reveal the rest of the revolutionaries identities, or their plans. Let him be the patsy. He can take whatever Kalen throws at him. Kalen shakes his head ruefully.

“Kid. I’ve known leaders, and there’s no way you’re the only one running things around here. Maybe you make weapons and deliver ‘em, sure. Maybe you’re high up enough in the food chain that you can say you ‘lead things’.” Kalen leans forward, tilts Magnus’s face with his hand. Magnus tries to wrench his face away. Kalen’s hand is hot and dry. “But no way you’d be so eager to give yourself up, if you’re the one in charge.”

Kalen grins and lets Magnus pull away. “But do you know what I think? I think you’re important to someone running things. Or someone running things is important to you.”

Magnus doesn’t speak. Blood runs down his chin from the crack in his lip. He can’t give anything away. The only thing the governor has is speculation. Silence.

Kalen stops smiling. In the dim light of the interrogation room, the shadows throw the harsh crags of his face into harsh relief. Magnus is. Not scared.

“One more chance, hotshot. Your friend from earlier’s gonna interview you again. Best give him what he wants, or, well. You’re either gonna give us information, or well, you’d make excellent bait.”

Kalen shurgs, and stands. Alex steps forward. Magnus’s brow furrows. She leans toward him and raises her hand. Magnus tenses. 

Alex slaps him. It’s a ringing blow against his ear and his cheek and the corner of his eye. After the shock wears off, Magnus gapes at her.

“That’s for flirting with me, last delivery you made,” she says crisply.

“Wha-? I never flirted with you?!” Magnus’s indignence overrides his attempts at stoicness.

Kalen chuckles, shakes his head. “Alexandra, stop playing with your food.” 

He turns and strides out of the cell. The silent guards follow him.

Alex stares at Magnus, scratches her left ear and smiles, tight-lipped, before following the guards out.

Magnus is alone. He sits there for a while, waiting for someone to come for him. Minutes pass. No one does. Magnus slowly reaches up with his cuffed hands to scratch his left ear, and realizes that Alex has managed to tuck a single hairpin behind it.

_____

“- and I slipped him a hairpin,” Alex finishes. “He doesn’t know how to pick locks, I don’t think? But I figure he can slip it to someone who does. I hope.”

Helga whistles. “Damn, girl.”

“That was fucking _suicidal_ , ‘Lex,” Van says.

“He’s okay,” Julia says. “Oh gods, he’s okay. Oh gods, he’s going to be _bait._ He doesn’t know how to pick locks!”

“Hey, hey Jules, it’s going to be okay,” Alex says, rubbing Julia’s shoulder reassuringly.

“Yeah. We know where him and the others are being held. Er.” Charmie glances at Alex. “If they’re being held in the same place.”

Alex nods sharply. “Mmhmm.”

Julia takes a deep breath. “We gotta break them out. Tonight.” Her friends all stare at her in varying stages of disbelief.

“Are you crazy?”

“That’s insane!”

“We don’t have nearly enough information, let alone the manpower!”

“Well, every second he has Magnus, that’s one more opportunity for Kalen to interrogate him and blow this entire revolution up before we even get started,” Julia argues.

‘He’s not gonna do that.” Alex shakes her head. “I know Kalen. He wants to make Magnus stew. Magnus will be fine. Kalen’s not giving up his advantage. We gotta do this carefully.”

“Jules,” Van says hesitantly. “I know you’re really worried about him, and you have every right to be, but we’re not helping Magnus by launching a half-assed plan that might get us killed.”

Julia sighs. Stares at the floor for a long moment, and then back up at her friends. She looks them all in the eye, in turn, and says firmly, “a week. I’m not waiting any longer than that. If you aren’t ready by then, I’m going to go without you.”

“Fucking hells, you would, wouldn’t you?” Aramil says.

“He asked me to marry him!”

And oh, that’s where those tears were.


	14. INTERLUDE: MAGNUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> magnus in prison, but not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy this is late. my apologies. i was traveling + batch writing a couple of the next chapters, so updates should hopefully be regular again <3

 Eventually, the two guards return. They put a burlap sack over his head, and Magnus submits to it with minimal complaint. Magnus doesn’t want them to jostle the hairpin, even if he can’t use it. They march him down corridors, presumably. Stone floors, probably – it’s cold down here. There’s no draft, and the air is still, but the further they walk, the colder it gets. Staircases, definitely — it’s impossible to fake gravity, probably.

“So you guys wanna tell me where we’re going?” Magnus asks. The guards don’t answer. He didn’t really expect them to.

“I need to piss,” Magnus says. The guards don’t answer.

Magnus knows he’s somewhere in the complex of the Governer’s Mansion. Mansion meaning the seat of Kalen’s government. That’s where the soldiers took him at first, and he hasn’t been taken in any carts or anything. He doesn’t think there’s any sort of transportation magic going on here, either, no portals or anything. But where are they taking him? How are there so many staircases? It’s been….six floors? Seven? Eight? Ten? The Governor’s Mansion doesn’t have that many floors, right? 

Where is he?

The sound of breathing. Someone sneezes. There are other people around? No one speaks. A shrieking. It soundsl like a metal door sliding open. A cell?

“In you go,” one of the guards says dispassionately. He pushes Magnus and Magnus stumbles forward. The shrieking, again. A heavy clank. This has got to be a cell, he’s sure of it.

“Turn and lift your hands,” the second guard says. “And put your face forward.”

Magnus does so, and two pairs of hands unlock his handcuffs and pull the sack off of his head. He squints, though the light in the cell is dim. There’s no light in the cell, actually — all illumination comes from dimly lit lanterns in the hallway, from which light slants through the bars of the cell. The two guards turn and leave unceremoniously, taking the burlap sack and handcuffs with him.

“Bye, jackasses,” Magnus calls. They don’t turn back. Magnus sighs. His lip hurts. His _face_ hurts. He’s got bruises up his ribs, probably, and those hurt too. He rubs his wrists He blinks a couple of times, and his eyes adjust to the dungeon’s illumination.

His cell is chiseled out of a single piece of stone, cave-like, with an iron grill that serves as a fourth wall blocking him from the corridor. The door is also made of iron bars, rough and heavy. There’s a bucket and a slapdash wooden bench in the corner. Shoddy craftsmanship, Magnus thinks. It’d probably break if he sat on it too hard. The floor is grey stone, polished smooth by time. This room must be very old, Magnus guesses, but the iron shows no sign of rust or wear – and the air is cold and damp, so there should be wear, if the iron was at all used. Kalen must have put these cells in, Magnus decides.

He grabs the iron bars and tries to shake them. They don’t budge. Well, it was worth a shot. He supposes that would have been too easy.

Across from him, there’s a mirroring cell, just as dark as his own. Magnus squints. He can make out what might be a person in the corner. Or perhaps just a particularly dense shadow.

“Hello?” he calls. The shadow unfolds into the shape of a man — no a woman, that rushes forward into familiar visibility. Skinnier than he remembers, clothes worn and stained, and face lit up by hope and incredulity. She rushes forward to press against the bars of her cell.

“Magnus?” She looks more tired than the last time he saw her, but her voice is strong.

“Lillian!” Magnus exclaims. “Oh, you’re not dead! That’s great! Where are we?”

“What in the seven hells are you doing here? What happened to you? Is that a black eye?”

“I got caught transporting weapons,” Magnus says.

“Why were you transporting weapons?” she asks, incredulous.

“Well, after you got captu— no. I can explain this to you later, Lillian, by any chance do you know how to pick locks?’ Magnus asks.

“No,” Lillian says. “Um, I guess I could try? Do you have lockpicks?”

“It’s okay,” Magnus says, though he’s a little bit disappointed. He had hoped. “Is there anyone else around here?”

She shakes her head.

“Just me,” she says. “The cells are spaced at random, I think. I’m not sure — they’ve moved me twice, though, and each time felt different. Sometimes I hear other people though? But those might just be the guards.”

“Are there a lot of guards?”

“I don’t know,” Lillian says, and grimaces. “I’m not much help, I’m afraid. I don’t even know how long I’ve been down here.”

“Few months,” Magnus says.

“Shit,” Lillian says.

“Yeah.” Magnus pulls the hairpin from out from behind his ear and examines it.

A lightweight metal alloy. Pretty flexible. Thin, made using magic or a machine. It’s so small, for all the effort that Alex put into getting it to him. He can’t even use it. There’s no one around who can use it.

Magnus suddenly feels exhausted. This morning, the only problem he had was that Julia had decided that she didn’t want to marry him, and his proposal hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to go, and that’s still a problem, but now he’s also in prison so that’s a second problem, and Kalen is going to wring all the information out of him that he can, which is going to lead Kalen to the revolution, to their friends, to Julia, to the workshop where he’s built a life and fallen in love and even though things aren’t great now, he needs her safe, he needs to be out of here, he wishes he hadn’t fought back, maybe if he hadn’t fought back they wouldn’t have taken him, so is this his fault? How come he wasn’t strong enough to defeat the guards? They shouldn’t have been able to overpower him.

He has to get back. He has to get out before they rip the knowledge out of his head and use it to hurt anyone else — to hurt Julia.

Magnus, eyes vacant, as if he’s sleepwalking, bends the hairpin at a ninety-degree angle. He thinks about Julia in danger. He finagles the end of it into a little twist. He thinks about men coming to the forge with swords and guns. He takes it between his thumb and forefinger and jabs the pin into the lock, which takes a few tries. He thinks about Julia fighting back, getting a few good hits in before being overpowered. He wiggles the makeshift lockpick around. He thinks about Julia, sitting in the interrogation room alone, with Kalen looming over her. Pins click. Minute vibrations tremble.

The door unlocks. It’s like magic. Lillian is staring at him, mouth open.

“Where’d you learn that?”

“I don’t know,” Magnus says, thinking about Julia, thinking about _҉͠ ̷̵͢͢͢-̶̷̧̢͜ ̷̴̡͠_̵͝_̶̨͘͜͠, . Eyes blank and mind whirling, he pushes the door open.

________

INTERLUDE: MAGNUS, HALF A CENTURY AGO. 

They’re in prison. Again.

This doesn’t happen often, but it happens _enough_ that they’ve got a system for it. The system, unfortunately, involves a lot of waiting for whoever isn’t in prison to post bail. “No sense getting into more fights than we already do,” the captain had said, and that was the end of it. At least this jail cell is nice – clean, well lit, and in possession of a door with a hefty looking lock. No windows, which is a shame.

This time, it’s Lup, Merle, and Magnus who have been captured. Public indecency charges. This planet is deeply conservative and unsurprisingly intolerant of people walking around without shirts. This had been a problem for Merle and Magnus. Lup had, in defending Merle and Magnus, been thrown in the brig with them.

They’re sprawled across the benches. Magnus is doing situps on the floor. It was nice and peaceful for the first half an hour, but now they’re all getting antsy, Magnus can tell.

“You know, if I was going to get thrown in here with you doofuses, I would have taken off my shirt too. ‘Least then they’d have _reason_ to arrest me,” Lup complains, lounging on the hard wooden bench as if it’s a throne.

“I think the people here would have spontaneously combusted,” Magnus says, grinning. “That would’ve been pretty great, though.”

“Mmhmm.” Lup says, nodding. “Anyway, I’m bored.”

“Hi bored, I’m Merle,” Merle says. Magnus rolls his eyes.

Lup groans. “Let’s ditch this place, already. They’re taking for-ev-er. It’s been _hours._ ”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” Merle says, halfheartedly. “Aw, who am I kidding. Let’s jailbreak!”

“How’re we gonna get out, though?” Magnus asks. Lup grins, and, incongruously, pulls a couple of hairpins out of her short hair. “I snagged these from ‘ko,” she explains. “Some guy on the last planet taught me how to pick locks with hair shit. I’ve been absolutely fucking dying to test this out in the field, my guys.”

“Dude!” Magnus says eagerly, scrambling to his feet. “You have got to show me how to do that.”

“Hell yeah, my man,” Lup says, and kneels next to the door. “Right, come over here, big guy, and let Lup school you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liner notes:
> 
> I don’t know how to pick locks but I sure do know how to google!  
> Muscle memory: a hell of a thing.  
> Btw this is a r e a l shitty lock. There’s reasons for that. Not really good reasons, but reasons. These rooms weren’t meant to hold prisoners, tbh, and kalen is a bad cocky boy.
> 
> I love lup.


	15. SEVEN DAYS, EIGHT-ISH PEOPLE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of things happening all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok lets be real ive given up on the narrative conceit that I set up at the beginning of 1 julia chapter to 1 magnus interlude pretty much completely so, you know, that’s how that is for this part of the story.

 

The meeting had sort of disintegrated when Julia had started crying, because Julia never cries, and as such, her tears are a capital-E Event even in the middle of a crisis. Someone makes her a cup of tea, and Julia drinks the cup of tea and then says “One week,” and her friends nod and say “Okay,” and “Alright, Julia,” and “I still think this is a  _ stupid  _ timespan, but, okay.”

Then Van says, “Not that I don’t love you all, but I think my place, and the bar are getting too hot. And Jules’ place is going to be even hotter. Can we plan this somewhere else?”

Charmie frowns.

“Should Julia even go back home, tonight? Kalen probably knows that Magnus lives there.”

Julia shakes her head.

“It looks too suspicious if I don’t go back, and besides, my dad’s at home.”

“Right,” Charmie says. “Well, you can come to my place tomorrow, if you want. I don’t think anyone is going to be searching me. It’ll be cramped.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Julia says. “Thanks.”

“Least I can do for the cause. Come over around sixish.”

Julia finishes her tea. By unspoken consensus, planning is done for the night, and they’re no longer revolutionaries, they’re a gaggle of twenty-somethings (or the racial equivalent of a human twenty-something) sitting in a living room. Everyone says their goodbyes, and one by one, everyone but Aramil files out of Van’s apartment. As Julia leaves, Van says “it’s going to be alright,” and Julia says “Thanks.” Julia thinks it must be easy for him to say that, when his fiance is safe and sound and standing next to him. Then she feels bad about the thought, but it’s too late, and it’s true.

Alex walks her home. The street is dark, quiet.

“You okay?” Alex says. “I mean, that’s kind of a stupid question, but, you want me to stay over tonight, or something?”

“I’m okay,” Julia says. “I’m just really mad. And scared.” 

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Yeah.”

“It’s just, this fucking sucks,” Julia says, because it does, because the past two days have been a culmination of  _ absolute shit,  _ and she can’t articulate why because it’s been terrible in all directions. 

“Yeah,” Alex says. “At least he’s okay?” 

“I guess,” Julia says. “Hey, why did Kalen take you down with him, this time?”

Alex doesn’t answer for a moment, frowning and twirling the hair that’s fallen out of her updo between her fingers.

“I don’t know. I think he wanted to brag,” Alex says. “He told me to take notes, and he’s never told me to do that before. He was  _ really _ excited to capture Magnus. He’s been kind of obsessed with taking us down. I didn’t bring it up, but, uh. He’s getting real weird about it.”

“Is it hard, working for him?” Julia asks, realizing that she’s never asked this, that Alex has been waking up five days a week and sitting at a desk outside of Kalen’s office, looking over his paperwork and writing letters and smiling at bureaucrats. Then after all of that, Alex  leaves the Governor’s Mansion and tells all of them about what she’s learned, and then she goes home and goes to sleep and does it all again.

Alex shrugs. “Someone has to.” She pauses. “You know what the worst part of it?”

“What?”

“Sometimes he makes sense.”

_____

It takes Magnus five attempts to open Lillian’s lock. The first four, he’s thinking too much, and fumbles with the pins over and over. The fifth, Lillian starts saying that he should get out without her, or get back in his cell before the guards come back, because they’ll probably be back soon, and Magnus starts saying “No, I’m not leaving you behind,” and then they start arguing, kind of, and the lock clicks open and they both stare at it.

Magnus opens Lillian’s cell door, and she steps outside. He gives her a hug, which she returns gratefully.

“Thanks, gods, thank you so much,” she says.

“You’re welcome. Wasn’t gonna leave you behind. D’you know which way I came in from?”

“Yeah, that way,” Lillian says, and points down the corridor. “I don’t know where guards are posted, though. And we don’t have any weapons, and I’m not a mage.”

“Well, better out than in. I think we should take our chances,” Magnus says, already running.

“Hey, wait up!”

Lillian shuffle-jogs to meet him, breathing heavier than it should be. She’s been imprisoned for a long time, Magnus realizes, slows down. He wonders how he’s going to get everyone out. What if people are injured, or have been tortured?

“Sorry,” he says. Lillian waves a hand dismissively, and then holds a finger to her lips. She whispers, “We should be quiet from now on. What are we going to do if we run into someone?”

“Um,” Magnus says. “I’ll fight them?”

“What if it’s multiple someones?”

“Um,” Magnus says, thinking about the way that the guards took him down. And he’s not alone, either. Lillian sighs.

“If it’s more than one guy, we’re toast, Mags.”

“Well what else are we supposed to do?”

Lillian doesn’t have an answer. Magnus scratches his beard, and little flecks of dried blood float down. Gross. 

“Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come for it.” 

They walk down the corridor quietly, both of them acutely aware of every drip of water and settling of stone. Wind whistles. There’s a draft, so there must be a way out. They don’t run into anyone, though a few times they freeze at the sound of faraway footsteps. Eventually, the corridor turns, and splits into two. 

“Left or right?” Magnus says. 

“I don’t know,” Lillian admits. 

“‘Kay, let’s go left,” Magnus says, and they go left. 

____

That night, Julia tells everything to her father. He had been waiting by the back door when she came back, and pulled her into a fierce hug, 

“I heard,” Steven had said. “Oh, Jules.” 

“Dad,” Julia said, and had hugged him back and wished that she was seven, eight, nine, and her only problems in life were homework and fighting with Jeremy who used to live two houses down. When she didn’t know Magnus, when Kalen hadn’t gone nuts, when she wasn’t planning a jailbreak.  

Julia spills the whole story at the kitchen table as the gaslamp flickers between them. It’s the only light in the house, which seems so empty without Magnus. It’s not like he’s always around, she thinks, but there’s something so different about the space when she knows that he’s being kept away. Everything’s about choice. Julia feels stupid for assuming inevitability between the two of them. Magnus was —  _ is _ , she amends firmly — so...present. She had thought that well, it was like gravity. No matter what happened, they would have worked through it together. They were supposed to talk this morning. And now she’s telling her father about he’s not coming home. But he is, she tells Steven, she just has to get him back. 

Steven listens carefully. Eventually, Julia’s story winds down. That’s it, that’s everything, the whole revolution laid out. No more time for plausible deniability. 

“When you go after him, I’m coming,” Steven says. 

“Dad,” Julia says. 

“Jules,” Steven says. “I’m coming.” 

Julia supposes she knows where she got her stubborn streak from. 

“You can’t come, dad, I need an alibi,” she tries. He dad shakes his head. 

“How’m I supposed to stay here when both of you are going to be in danger? What sort of father would I be?” 

“The kind who respects his daughter’s wishes?” 

“How’m I supposed to stay back when I know that you might get killed out there?” 

“You could get hurt too! You’re my dad,” Julia says, and is at a loss to explain that she’s already on the verge of losing Magnus, she can’t lose him too. 

Steven shakes his head. Julia scrubs her hands over her eyes. The lamp flickers. 

____ 

Night and day don’t exist in the catacombs. Magnus doesn’t know what time it is, or how long they’ve been walking. He understands why they haven’t run into anyone yet. This place is a labyrinth, a stone maze. It must be nearly impossible for someone without a map to navigate it. He’s hungry. At least he doesn’t need to piss anymore — thank the gods for buckets, he thinks absently. The corridors go on and on. He can’t tell if they’re curving or not. They branch, and at every branching point they pick a decision and go. Magnus rips open the scab on his lip and uses his blood to mark where they came from in little rust-colored marks near the ground. He thought that was pretty clever. 

“We have to go back, Magnus,” Lillian says. “Before they notice we’re gone — there’s no way we’re getting out of here right now.” 

“Just a little further,” Magnus says. “Is it me, or do you feel air flowing?” 

“I think it’s just you,” Lillian says. 

“How come we haven’t found anyone else?” Magnus asks. 

“Wait, Magnus,” Lillian tugs his sleeve. “Look!” 

She points down a corridor crosswise to them. Magnus turns. A sliver of light, far in the distance. A door? 

“Oh!” 

____

“Hm, Burnsides escaped, then?” Kalen doesn’t look up from his desk. “Well, that’s rather unfortunate for him.” 

“Sir?” 

Alex walks crisply around the guard quailing in the doorway. She had been standing outside for a full ten minutes, pretending to shuffle papers around. The guard has been stammering his way through an explanation of how the prisoner Magnus Burnsides escaped, sir, we don’t know how he did it, he’s loose in the catacombs now, he didn’t have any tools on him and we blindfolded him before letting him down there, there’s no way he could have done it  _ but he did. _

“Hm?” Kalen glances at Alex. “Ah, Alexandra. Do you have the notes from the interrogation for me?” 

“Sir, I thought you were planning on interrogating the prisoner further? Isn’t it, um, bad that he escaped?”

Kalen laughs. “I don’t mean  _ escaped _ . The place is a maze, Alexandra. He’ll wander around for a day or so, and then I’ll send some troops to flush him out. That’ll soften him up a bit. No rush.” 

“Oh,” Alex says. Kalen looks at her keenly. 

“Taking an interest?” 

“Only superficially, sir,” she says blandly. She’s staring at the guard’s butt. It’s not a particularly good butt, but it has what looks like a badly folded map peeking out of his pocket. If she just reached out and grabbed it— 

“Alexandra?” 

Alex looks back at Kalen. Right. He’s staring at her. 

“Sir?” 

“That will be all,” he says, and she nods and walks out. Damn. But, now she knows that the maps exist. And that guard will be leaving the office soon. 

____

“He escaped,” Alex says. “Sort of?”

They’re meeting in Charmie’s living room, as planned. The blinds are drawn, which maybe makes them look more suspicious, but there’s no help for it. They can’t keep asking Van to cast minor illusion on the windows. Alex details the whole conversation that she overheard, and the other snips and snaps of information that she’s been able to glean. 

“What are the chances he finds the entrance?” Aramil asks.

“Slim,” Alex says. “He’d have to have some sorta  _ insane  _ luck. It’s a maze down there. It’s literally a maze, actually. It’s kind of crazy. When I went down there, I only went as far as the first level, and I still needed someone to guide me. But I stole this —” 

She pulls out a flimsy sheet of paper — cheap newsprint, printed hastily, a cobweb-like diagram of passages and stairways. 

“— from the guard that was telling Kalen about Magnus. So we should be a little better off.” 

“Shit,” Charmie says, impressed. “Kalen didn’t catch you?” 

“I don’t think so,” Alex says, and her voice wavers a bit. “I think.” 

“So that’s good, right?” Van says. “We’ve got a map, and we know how to get in, and we’ll have the team finalized by tomorrow. Jailbreak’s a go.” 

“How’d Magnus get out?” Julia wonders.  

“No idea,” Alex says. “The guard was kind of freaking out about that, actually.” 

“Huh.” 

“So...We’re good. We’re doing this,” Van says. “We’re breaking into  _ fucking  _ Kalen’s mansion and rescuing everyone he’s got.” 

“Everyone left,” Aramil says. 

“Don’t be so negative, this is gonna be hard enough as it is,” Helga says, shoving Aramil. 

“How are we going to find him, though?” Julia says. “If he’s wandering around…” 

Alex shakes her head. 

“By Sunday Kalen’s going to have stuck him back in a cell. And those are marked, so.” 

“He won’t hurt him?” 

“I don’t know,” Alex says. “I don’t think so.” 

____

The sliver of light grows as they get near it, into a glowing rectangle of daylight, the slit between a stone door and the doorframe. Magnus pushes it a few times. It starts to move — it’s not locked, just barred on the other side. It’s amazing, he thinks. This is going much more easily than he expected. 

“Daylight,” Lillian says, worshipfully, staring at the crack in the door.   

Magnus peers out, squinting. He can make out what seems like a flat plain. Scrublands.

We’re at the bottom of the spire,” he says. He experimentally slams himself against the door again. Ow. It’s budging, though. 

Magnus thinks about leaving. About slamming the door open and climbing the spire and punching out Kalen’s guards and, well, oh, that’s where this fantasy falls apart. He’d just be bringing more danger to the Waxmans if he went back. And he hasn’t even found the other prisoners, yet. 

“You get out of here, Lils,” he says. “I can get this open, but I can’t leave without everyone else.” 

“Nuh-uh,” she says. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but you’re stuck with me.” 

“You don’t need to do this,” Magnus tries. Lillian stares at him with a steady gaze. 

“Neither do you.” 

Having reached detente, they stand there glaring at each other for a moment. Lillian looks away, back at the light longingly. She turns back to Magnus. “As much as I’d like to leave, where the hell am I going to go? They’ll notice that I’m gone, and then they’ll ask you about it. Sticking together is the better plan.” 

Magnus sighs. “Fine. Let’s go see if we can find the others, then.” 

They walk back. And walk. And walk. 

It’s a small comfort, that they’re captured far away from the door. 

____

“So that’s the plan, then,” Charmie says, rolling up the replica of the map they’d made. 

“Looks like,” Julia says. She’s nervous. It’s a good plan, she thinks. But things could go wrong. Things can always go wrong, she’s learned. 

They’ll go in during sunset, between the day shift and night shift. A small group — kitted out with weapons courtesy of the Hammer and Tongs, weapons strong enough to smash locks and bone. The goal is to find the prisoners and rescue as many people as possible. Hopefully the mission is completed before Kalen is alerted. The name of the game is silence, this time. 

They all know that as soon as they free the captives, that’s their best opportunity to attack Kalen, that they’ll have to move fast, within the next couple of days. But first they have to free the captives. And it depends on what Kalen does. Maybe they should have combined the assault on Kalen and on his jail, Julia thinks. But Kalen has too many captives. People could get hurt. People might get hurt anyway. 

She misses Magnus. Julia’s spent the whole week missing Magnus. She doesn’t like to think about it. He’ll be back soon, she tells herself. She’s going to save him, and tell him she loves him, and then she’s going to kill Kalen, she thinks. That's the thought that's been keeping her going, this week, as she lives in autopilot. 

Alex shakes her head. “One thing. I’m coming,” Alex says. “I’m the only one that’s been down there. Even if it’s only the first level.” 

“You’ll be blowing your cover,” Julia says. “Are you sure?” 

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to matter for much longer,” Alex says grimly. 

________

Magnus wakes up at the interrogation table. Shit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- magnus managed to find one of two exits to the catacombs because travis makes very good rolls.

**Author's Note:**

> hey if you liked this video maybe rate and review, and consider subscribing to my channe— haha just fuckin kidding hmu @[anonymousalchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/) if you wanna talk fandom. 
> 
> ((.....but maybe leave me a kudos or a comment if you liked this - shameless begging, but whats a girl gotta do in this economy))


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